Two Steps Behind
by Willa Mitty
Summary: Jondy comes to Seattle for a visit but finds that no matter where you go, you cannot run from the shadows of your past. Set sometime in early Season 2. ML subplot. COMPLETE!
1. The Hours Before Sunrise

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Dark Angel. (I may wish that I did, but then again, if I did, I would be sitting in a nice mansion somewhere instead of in my bedroom at my parents' house.) Dark Angel and all characters, settings, etc. portrayed therein belong to such creative geniuses as James Cameron, Charles Eglee, and anyone else who might sue me if I didn't write this disclaimer. I do not own Don Henley or his song New York Minute, which is quoted in Chapter 11 and in the titles of Chapters 11 and 12. At last update, they had become the property of Ted Turner. (Note: If you don't live in the SouthEastern US, you probably won't get that joke.) Nor do I claim to own Seattle. As of 4PM yesterday, Seattle is now the property of Microsoft. I do, however, claim this story line and Milly the cat. She is mine. Cameron and Eglee may have Donny Perez. I don't really want him. He doesn't shower very often.  
  
**Rating:** PG-13 for language. There's nothing that you wouldn't hear on the show, but some of you might not be fond of hearing it, hence the rating. There's also mention of blood and brains splattering on a windowsill. (You have to make the badguy's death good, you know.)  
  
**Genre:** General, but it's actually a little bit of everything - some action and humor, a lot of angst from Jondy and some M/L shippiness . . . no promises about how well written. lol  
  
**Spoilers:** Some from season two, but those episodes have already aired in the US.  
  
**Dedication:** For all of you who have given me encouragement along the way. This is for you.  
  
  
  
  
**

_Two Steps Behind_

**   


Chapter One:

  


The Hours Before Sunrise

  
  


The cat stood, her forepaws braced against the windowsill of the front passenger side window, glaring out through the cracked glass at a trio of dogs racing along beside them. Though they were caught up in the game of chasing the truck and were unaware of her presence, the tip of her tail flicked in annoyance, and the black hair that crossed her back stood on end. The warm night breeze that blew in through the broken-out rear window did nothing to distract her. Bracing her legs harder against the badly torn seat beneath her back paws, she raised up another inch for a better look.

"Honestly, Milly, why are you always looking for trouble?" asked the slim blonde woman who lay across the back seat of the old car. "Come on over here, I know you're hungry." She motioned with her hand. Milly glanced back at the dogs and gave one last flick of her tail, as if to say, "don't even think about it," before turning and climbing into the back seat. "I don't know why I put up with you," the woman said as she scratched the cat's chin. She reached into the backpack which lay on the floor, pulled out a sandwich, unwrapped it, and took a bite. "I'd say it was your pretty face . . . " she pulled off a piece of the sandwich and tossed it towards the cat. "But your face isn't all that pretty, and sometimes you have mouse-breath." She grinned. Milly flicked her tail, patiently waiting for another bite. "You know I'm kidding." She scratched her behind her left ear and broke off another piece for the cat, who helped her finish off a second sandwich in silence. Then, after giving herself a rather precise bath, the cat curled up against the backpack and fell asleep.

_Well,_ the woman thought, _at least one of us can sleep._ The trip to Seattle was going to be a long one. By her estimation, it would be a few hours after sunrise when the driver stopped at the truckstop just outside of Seattle, the one she'd overheard him telling his buddy about. She'd figure out the details when she got there, but until then, this old wrecked Honda on the back of his rig was as good a spot to hitch a ride as any. She turned her head to glance out the back window at the stars, and for a moment, she let herself remember another night, so many years ago . . .

Running. Headlights. An impact. The memory of hands, of being picked up by a set of warm arms. Then, later, gazing up at the stars and treetops flying by outside the window. Lying, rolled up in a blanket, as her body, covered only by a thin hospital gown, warmed from the cold temperatures outside. Her feet warming after running barefoot through the snow. Wondering if they were following . . .

She sighed. It seemed so long ago, over half of her lifetime, to tell the truth, but it was always there, haunting her dreams when she closed her eyes. Of course, the last couple of years had given her more nightmares to add to those old favorites, but she tried not to look back on the pains and the mistakes of the past. She was tired of feeling those, and tonight she was going to look forward into the future.

Zack had been so secretive about Max. All he'd ever told anyone was that he'd found her, but he would never tell any of them where. He claimed that it was a safety measure, so that she wouldn't be compromised if one of them were to be recaptured, taken back to their own private childhood hell, and tortured until they spilled the beans, but she had never bought that. Whenever she'd talked to Zack, he would always say things about the others, where they were, what they were doing, but never about Max. Max was different.

_Well,_ she thought sadly. _Big Brother isn't watching anymore. _And he wouldn't be ever again, and neither would Tinga. Closing her eyes, she said a silent prayer. At least Max was back from that hell that they'd taken her to, and, according to Krit, she was back in Seattle. She figured it was past time to pay a visit to her baby sister.

She let her thoughts wander on for some time. She didn't need very much sleep, and she'd be awake by the time they stopped, in any event. She wanted to be asleep when the sun came up the next morning. She couldn't stand to watch the sun rise. 


	2. All in Your Head

Chapter One

Chapter Two:

All in Your Head . . . 

She spent most of the next day wandering about Seattle with the sector pass she'd stolen out of a police car at the truck stop. _You'd think people would know better than to leave their valuables lying out that way, _she thought to herself. _Leaving it there in a locked glove box in a locked car, why that's just asking for someone to give it a new home. _She'd done a clean job of breaking in, so they probably wouldn't even miss it for a while. She was anxious to see Max, but she also wanted to get a look around, just in case she somehow ended up in a different spot in the city and needed a niche to crawl into. In the end it wasn't really necessary. It had been a long time since she'd been in Seattle, but nothing had really changed. 

She let herself get lost in the crowds, enjoying the feeling of anonymity. Anonymity was safe. There were so many different people, with different faces and different lives, all completely unlike her own. They'd never had to live on the run. They didn't have to spend their lives looking over their shoulders, wondering if some demon from the past would ever catch up with them. Every now and then a face would seem familiar. It came with the territory of having a photographic memory, she guessed. She may not have seen them for several years, but somehow they still seemed familiar. _Familiar strangers,_ she mused. She was sure she even recognized a few of the homeless people as she wandered down South Market, but the face that jumped out at her from the middle of a crowd on the other side of the street was one she remembered most distinctly.

Her muscles clenched instinctively as the split-second memory came back. Gunshots. Screams. Coming back five minutes too late. "Son of a bitch." She took off across the street, running right in front of an ancient Chevy pick-up.

The driver braked, narrowly avoiding hitting the woman who was little more that a blur as she streaked across the road in front of him. "Hey, watch where you're going, you worthless little-" but she didn't hear the driver's outraged response. She was already across the street, pushing her way through the crowd in search of that face. After fifteen minutes of searching every alley, every nook and cranny within a couple of blocks, she finally decided that it had all been in her imagination. _You need a break, girl, _she told herself. _It's all in your head. That worthless little piece of slime can't be anywhere around here._ She sighed, wishing for a moment that the memory of that day would just leave her alone and let her suffer in peace.

Just before the sun began to set she tightened the arms on her backpack, checked that the zipper was open just enough, and headed across town to the address Krit had given her. 

Krit had been right. It wasn't much to look at, but then again, ever since the Pulse hit, people had slacked off from hanging lace curtains and planting flowers in window boxes, not that that was Max's style, she suspected, but somehow the building held the air of anonymity and old secrets that would have fit them all so well. Krit had said that Max had a roommate, but other than giving her name he didn't say anything else about her. She paused, looking up at the building and wondering how much this 'Original Cindy' person might know. Best to play it safe, just in case.

She'd had a roommate once herself, and she and Trish had gotten along fine, but she'd never been close enough to tell her the truth. _The less she knows, the safer she is_, she'd told herself. Of course, she hadn't seen Trish since that evening late last winter, when she'd overheard a broadcast on the neighbor's television set as she left for work and figured it was time she got the hell out of Dodge, or San Francisco, as the case happened to be. She'd left Trish a note that said, "Sorry, but I gotta go. Family emergency. Don't worry, I'll be fine. Have a nice life." and enough money to pay her half of the rent for the next month. It seemed kind of a cruel way to say goodbye, but she hadn't had much of a choice. She knew how dangerous she could be to the people she loved. She had grabbed Andy, Milly, and all the cash she had left from her emergency fund, and then she'd run. She hadn't heard from Trish since, though she planned to check up on her in a few months, when she was sure all of the proverbial smoke had cleared, and when, hopefully, Trish would have forgotten about the mysterious cable hack the night that she had vanished . . .

She entered the building and crept down the hallway of the seventh floor, keeping her eyes peeled for any movement in the shadows. She didn't really expect any trouble, but years of watching over her shoulder had made her rather wary, especially in closed spaces and dark hallways. She wondered if Max was home, and how she might react to finding her sister showing up rather unexpectedly on her doorstep. Pausing just outside the door, she listened to the movement within. Over the music on the radio her sensitive hearing could pick up the sounds of footsteps. As much as she would have enjoyed sneaking in, she didn't think Max's roommate would enjoy a stranger popping in unexpectedly, so she took the more traditional route of knocking.

There was a sound of shuffling as the music was turned down, and then the door opened to reveal a black woman holding a bottle of fingernail polish and wearing a bright red T-shirt. Noticing the cautious expression on the woman's face, she put on her sweetest smile.

"Hi, I was wondering if Max might be home?" She peeked around the door into the apartment. 

"And you would be . . ." The statement was short, almost rude, but there was a sense of wariness and caution in the way she'd spoken. _Maybe she does know something after all._

"Just an old friend from grade school." There, that would certainly settle it.

"Uh-huh." Original Cindy eyed her suspiciously. "How old a ---"

Just then the phone rang, cutting her off mid-question. She paused, looked her over for a second, and then motioned her to enter as she went to answer the phone. "Yeah . . . oh . . . her pills?" Then she lowered her voice a bit and turned to face the wall as she continued speaking with the person on the other end of the line, as if that would block the X5 across room from hearing all she had to say. "How bad? . . . she ok? . . . I'll be right over, aiight?" She hung up the phone and glanced across the room at her guest.

"Original Cindy don' mean to be rude, but she got a little . . . errand to run."

"It's the seizures, right? Max is having seizures." She put a hand on her hip. She'd bet good money that Max had told Original Cindy more than she had told Trish. Original Cindy narrowed her eyes, not quite sure how to answer the question. "Look, if I said I was a member of the barcode class of February '09, would that mean anything to you?" From the way one corner of her mouth tilted up, it was obvious that it did.

"Turn around, girl." Okay, if this was what it took. She checked to make sure that she was out of sight of the window. Knowing what she was looking for, she turned, pulling the hair aside just enough so that the barcode on the back of her neck was visible.

"So, you got any of that tryptowatsit on ya?"

"Did she run out?" She turned to face Original Cindy again, concern written on her face.

"Well, no, she's got some . . . it's just real complicated, girl." Original Cindy grabbed her coat and led her out through the door. "You betta come with me, suga'. All will come clear with time."


	3. Eerily Familiar Eyes

Chapter Three:

Eerily Familiar Eyes

__

This was definitely one of the nicer buildings in Seattle before the Pulse. She wished for a moment that she could have seen it in those first months of freedom after the escape, those few months before all of the computers got fried, but she'd never ventured into this part of town back then. They stepped into the elevator and her companion pushed the "penthouse" button. "Sorry, Milly," she muttered as the elevator moved upward, knowing that the cat was probably not enjoying the ride. Original Cindy glanced sideways at her, but said nothing. She imagined that most people wouldn't be likely to ask a genetically engineered killing machine why they were talking to themselves. She smiled inwardly at the thought.

A rather harried looking man in a wheelchair, who for some reason looked extremely familiar, answered the door within seconds of the knock. "I feel really bad about this," he began, but stopped when his eyes fell on the stranger. 

"Newest member of the family," Original Cindy said by way of explanation. "Where's my boo?" 

He eyed the newcomer suspiciously for a moment. "Over on the sofa." He turned and led the way into his living room. 

"Are either of you, perchance, allergic to cats?" They gave her a strange look. 

"No . . . " they answered in unison, taken off guard by the unexpected question.

"Okay, all I wanted to know."

And then there she was, lying on the sofa, her body shaking violently. A glass of milk sat on the floor beside of her, but it was clear that she was shaking too hard to hold the glass to her lips. Her dark hair was damp at the scalp, where she'd been sweating. She was curled into a fetal position, and for a moment the memory returned of a much younger Max, head shaved into a military-style buzz cut, lying on her bunk in nothing but a thin gown, shaking, much like she was now, tears streaming down her face because she was afraid that they would give her to the Nomalies. She shook the memory off. 

She plopped her backpack on the floor, remembering at the last moment that Milly wouldn't enjoy being dropped. "Sorry, baby." She opened the zipper of one pouch, lifted out the cat, and set her down on the floor. She opened another pouch and pulled out a brown prescription bottle. As Milly stretched and began to nose her way about the room, she moved towards the sofa and wished for a moment that this reunion could have been under happier circumstances. Lifting the glass out of the way, she sat down on the sofa and rested her sister's head in her lap. "Hey, baby sister."

Max looked up at her, a slightly confused look coming into her eyes. "Jondy? Great, now I'm hallucinating, too. Just what I need," she mumbled though clenched teeth. Jondy smiled. She poured a few pills out into her hand, then put the bottle aside to grab the glass of milk. 

"Happy to see you, too." Max tried to pluck the pills from her hand but her hands shook so that she couldn't get a firm grip. "Just open up." Max did as she was told, and Jondy plopped them into her mouth. She maneuvered the glass of milk to Max's lips, and, after several attempts she somehow managed to drink it all down. Smoothing the hair out of her sister's face, she reached over and took Max's hand and watched her struggle against the seizures for several more moments. Someone reached down to take the glass from Jondy's hand. It was only then that she remembered her two companions. Original Cindy, worry etched into her face, took the glass and wandered off, presumably to the kitchen for a refill. The man sat across the room with a strange expression on his face. Worry, certainly was there, and love, that shone through as clear as day, but there was something else there as well. Regret? Guilt? She couldn't quite make it out.

She glanced back down in time to see her sister's eyes flutter open. Her tremors had nearly subsided by the time Original Cindy returned to the room with more milk. "Always the mother," she murmured as Jondy held up the glass for her to drink. "You and Eva," and then a shadow crossed her face. _Eva_, but Max didn't need to think of that now.

"Close your eyes and get some rest." 

Max's eyes fluttered shut. "I'm sorry," she murmured before drifting off to sleep. 

Jondy smoothed the hair across her forehead, propped a pillow under her head, and let her sleep.

It was already closer to dawn than to dusk, but there was no way that Logan was going to sleep, not after what had nearly happened tonight. He pushed himself away from the computer screen, let out a deep breath, and raked a hand through his hair. Catching a movement out of the corner of his eye, he turned to see Jondy, arms crossed in front of her, leaning against the doorjamb.

"Logan Cale." Original Cindy had just told her his name, and it had rung a bell or two. _How extremely ironic,_ she thought.

"And you would be Max's sister, Jondy." _Sister. _She wondered for a moment how many people knew the truth about Max, but then again, probably not so many as knew the truth about her.

"Yeah." She paused. "Just so you know, you don't have to worry about my cat. She's toilet-trained. I mean, I can't exactly carry a litter box around in my backpack all of the time, you know. She's already figured out where the bathroom is, so she shouldn't be any trouble." 

She took a deep breath. _No reason to beat around the bush,_ she thought, nagged once again by the thought that there was something oddly familiar about him. "Have they always been this bad?"

"Only since she got back from Manticore." He turned to face her. "They had a different treatment back there, one that isn't available out here. The tryptophan will work okay, once she gets readjusted to it, but for another week or so things might not be so great. I suspected as much right after she came back and the seizures started up again. I got in touch with your sister Jace, and she confirmed my suspicions."

"Jace?" _Jace is out of Manticore? _she thought. _But she stayed behind . . . _

"She went AWOL last February," he explained, reading the confusion in her expression. "She was more interested in being a mother to the baby she was carrying than she was in being a soldier."

__

Jace? AWOL because she was pregnant? "Yeah, well, when we signed our contracts back in '07, I noticed that they didn't offer us a very good deal on maternity leave, and I don't think childbirth was covered under the group policy. 'Course we didn't have dental, either." Logan smiled lightly. Sarcasm seemed to run in the family . . .

"Why didn't she take anything before?" she asked quietly, stepping into the room and dropping her hands to her sides. "She had pills in her pocket."

"She did, they just weren't enough. She needed more, but by then she was too shaky to take them herself." He paused. "And it's not as if I could give them to her, and Asha's out of town . . . doing something for me. I had to call somebody . . ."

"Huh?"

"Asha is a . . . friend of mine. She knows about Max." _Interesting,_ Jondy thought to herself. _Very interesting._ She gave him a stern look. That hadn't been the information she'd been hoping for. Logan removed his glasses, and rubbed his fingers over his aching eyes. He glanced briefly in her direction before he slipped them back on, and in that second, it clicked. _Bingo. So that's why you look so familiar._

"I can't touch her," he began. "Manticore, they . . . did something to her when she was there. It only affects me, but now, if I touch her, or she touches me, I die. Period." He turned the chair back around to face the computer screen, propped his elbows on the desk and, rested his forehead in his hands. "Do you know how hard it was tonight?" he continued. "Sitting there, watching her, wishing I could do something? I couldn't even hold her hand and help her through it. I wanted to just forget it all and give her the damned pills. I almost did, but she yelled at me. Said she'd kick my ass if I touched her." Jondy almost chuckled. It sounded like her baby sister, all right.

"You should get some sleep," she said softly. "Max is asleep on your sofa, and Original Cindy's zonked out in a chair. Hell, even my cat is asleep somewhere."

He shook his head. "I don't think I can sleep." 

"At least lie down for a bit and try to get some rest." 

He conceded with a nod. In his experience, there was no point in arguing with an X5. He didn't imagine that this one would be any different. "I'll try."

Jondy walked back into the living room, but turned as she passed the doorway. "By the way, thanks."

"Thanks for what?" His brows knit in confusion.

"That hack last February. You quite possibly saved my life, mine and several others."

"You're welcome," he said after a moment. He turned and headed toward his bedroom. "You are quite welcome."


	4. Reunion

Chapter Four:

Reunion

There was something on her chest, a soft, warm something, and it was . . . vibrating? Max opened her eyes slowly, her reflexes held at the ready, not quite sure what she would find. What she found was a rather contented looking black cat, front paws curled beneath its body, purring and staring directly into her face. "And who might you be?" she asked, lifting a hand to stroke the furry stranger.

"That would be my cat, Familiar. Milly for short. Congratulations, she is now convinced that she owns you." Max turned her head to see her sister holding out a glass of milk to her. She reached out and took it as the cat jumped down from her perch and went padding off in search of another human to pester. She sat up slowly, thankful that her hands were no longer shaking. Last night had been far too terrifying, even for her. "She showed up outside of my apartment about a year and a half ago," Jondy continued as Max drank the milk. "I couldn't just leave her. Besides, she's probably our second cousin or something."

"So I wasn't dreaming," Max said as she finished off the milk.

"You should be so lucky." Jondy grinned. "You oughta come out and get some breakfast. We're raiding your boyfriend's kitchen."

"He's not my boyfriend," Max muttered, as she stood, still slightly shaky on her feet.

"Yeah, okay." Jondy grinned to herself. "So your roommate told me this morning." She held out her arms. "Don't I get a hug?" Max smiled and hugged her sister. "You know," she said, sobering, "when you slipped through the ice on that pond, I thought for sure they'd get you."

"Nah, I just hung around until they were done searching the area. They kept walking around that pond, and there I was underneath the ice, looking right up at them. I thought for sure they'd look down and see me." She shrugged. "I guess they forgot that their perfect soldiers could withstand freezing temperatures and hold their breath for extended periods of time." 

"Well, that's what happens when you send a man to do a woman's job."

Max smiled. "You know what, baby sister? I think you and Original Cindy are gonna get along just fine." She glanced down at her disheveled clothing. "I think I'm gonna take a shower first. I'm kind of a mess."

"Suit yourself, but I make no promises about anything being left in the kitchen when you get done."

Several minutes later, Original Cindy looked up from her coffee cup. She eyed Jondy curiously for a moment. "So, tell me somethin', girl," she asked. "What's the dealio on this whole 'baby sister' thing you two got goin' on?" 

Jondy smiled, touched that Max's roommate was taking such an interest in her personal life, even the parts of her childhood that weren't necessarily very pretty. "Max was the youngest, everybody's 'baby sister.'" She paused to take a drink from her own cup. "One day when she was about four or five she got sad because everybody had a baby sister except for her, so I told her I'd be her baby sister, and ever since that day that's what we've called each other." _Well, ever since that day minus eleven years, _she silently amended.

Logan, who'd been listening intently from his spot by the stove, walked over and sat down across the table, his exoskeleton making a light whirring noise in the silence of the room. Thankfully, Jondy had had that little bit of information explained to her earlier this morning, though she'd been quite confused when she'd first seen him strolling into the kitchen, making her doubt, for just a moment, her sanity for remembering him being in a wheelchair the night before.

A rustling in the next room alerted her to the fact that Max had finished in the bathroom, and a moment later her sister came wandering into the kitchen wearing fresh clothes, her hair still damp from the shower. She wondered for a moment just where she'd gotten them. Did she keep clothes at Logan's apartment? _Interesting. _She also noticed that Max and Logan avoided looking at each other, but as Max walked across the kitchen to get herself a cup of coffee, she noticed Logan's eyes follow her across the room, a look in their depths so intense that she felt her stomach clench. She knew that look all too well. It still hurt to remember. 

Original Cindy gave Max an assessing look. "You okay this morning, boo?"

"Yeah, I think I'm gonna be okay, just gotta take it easy for a little while, you know."

Original Cindy finished her coffee and sat the coffee cup in the sink. "Well, Original Cindy's gonna be late for work, and though nothin' in this world would bring her greater joy than five more minutes without hurting her eyes on Normal's face, her ears fear the noises he would make much more." She gave Max a hug. "You sure you don't want us to start another slowdown or somethin'? It's worked before."

"No, I don't want you guys to put your jobs on the line for me." Original Cindy frowned.

"If you're sure, girl, but you change your mind, you just say the word, and it's done." She slipped her backpack onto one shoulder. "Thanks for breakfast," she said to Logan. "Later," and then she was out the door.

"Well," Logan said, standing and starting towards the kitchen door. "I guess I'll leave the two of you to get reacquainted. I'd imagine you've got quite a bit of catching up to do." And then it was Max's eyes following Logan's figure as he walked away. Her face softened, reflecting a sort of longing that exposed the woman who existed under the tough façade she erected for the world. Two people so obviously in love, and Jondy couldn't help but envy them for a moment because of this thing from Manticore that kept them apart. As love went, it could be so much worse.

"So," Jondy said as Max dropped her gaze down to the cup in her hands, "what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into in the last eleven years?"

They chatted back and forth over breakfast, and as they ate, Max filled Jondy in on the details of her life and some of the places she had been and things she had done since the escape. They both carefully avoided the topic of Max's months at Manticore. When she mentioned meeting up with Hannah again and the woman's role in her escape, Jondy had to smile. 

"That's strange. I wonder how many of us had help getting away? A group of transgenic kids escape from a covert government genetics lab, and a couple of them get picked up and helped out along the way. It's enough to make you believe in the good of mankind. Well, almost."

"You had help too?"

"Yeah, well, he hit me with his car. I guess he figured that if I got away, he'd never be able to turn it in to the insurance company. 'Yes sir, my car was severely dented when I ran into a pre-pubescent killing machine.' I guess you gotta have some proof if you're going to make a claim like that." She paused a moment, the grin sliding from her face. "Actually, he was on his way to work. Only his third day, and he hadn't found an apartment in the area yet, so he was still making the two hour commute." Memories began flashing through her mind. Being picked up, carried to the car. "Dr. William Marsley, fresh out of school with a shiny new degree in psychology. You'll never guess where he worked."

"Manticore."

Jondy grinned. "You weren't supposed to guess." She paused before continuing. "He was there to study the way we interacted with each other, the way that integrating the concept of family into a military squadron would affect the performance of the group as a whole, and of its members as individuals. He was also studying the way our training affected us emotionally, looking for any reasons to believe we might have a psychological breakdown later on in our lives."

Max smiled ruefully. "In other words, they wanted to know if we had a conscience." She shuddered inwardly for a moment. 

Jondy nodded. "We were our own, new and vastly different society. 'It was a great research opportunity,' or so he was told." She took another sip of her coffee, the memories floating back.

"I'd been running for over an hour. I'm sure they'd lost my trail by then. I'd cut through a couple of frozen streams, even doubled back a few times, hoping to confuse any dogs that they had trailing me. Of course all I could think of at the time was getting as far away as I could. The terrain was unfamiliar. I'd never been so far from base, and coming down over the side of a hill, I slipped on some crusted-over snow and slid right into the road in front of him." She could still remember the headlights, the feel of the impact. "When I came to he was checking me for broken bones, turned out he'd been a med student before he decided he was more interested in what made people tick mentally than how they worked physically. He acted pretty surprised that I'd made such a nasty dent in his car without getting hurt myself."

"So he just took you and left?"

"Well, he knew what I was the moment he saw me, not too many kids with barcodes running around in their undies in rural Wyoming, you know. He told me once that he'd thought about taking me back there, but only for a second. He couldn't bring himself to do it. He'd only worked there for a couple of days, but that had been more than enough for him to realize that something was seriously wrong. When he was checking me over, he found the pink scars, the ones that hadn't healed over from their most recent bout of severing my spinal cord to see how long it would take for it to grow back together. I think that's what made up his mind. He just picked me up, rolled me up in a blanket, put me in the backseat, and got the hell out of there."

A moment of silence passed between them as both remembered their times as transgenic lab rats. "They didn't catch him?" Max finally asked, sounding skeptical.

"Well, he didn't exactly go back to Manticore after that. He knew he couldn't keep me himself, so he . . . dropped me off somewhere for safe keeping and quit his job there. By the time Manticore put two and two together, assuming of course that they ever did, one Dr. William Marsley had already died in a rather fiery auto accident. Well, with a little help from yours truly, that is." Max raised an eyebrow. 

Jondy rose to pick up the coffeepot, refilling both of their cups. "It was right after the Pulse, and everything was in shambles. We found some bum on the street who had drunk himself into a fatal case of alcohol poisoning, put him in the car, and voila! Of course it took a little legwork from a pint-sized burglar, but Bill grew up in a small town, so his medical records weren't too spread out. I walked right in, switched the records, and walked right out. I mean, honestly, who expects a little kid to be doing something like that?" She smiled. "So, when they finally managed to identify the car, what was left of the body inside it matched the owner's medical records perfectly, and with the evidence of alcohol in the victim's body, it worked like a charm. All anybody ever thought was that another guy had lost his fortune, gotten a little too drunk in an attempt to console himself, and gotten himself killed on the way home one night. If Manticore ever got into it, they were probably pretty convinced by the entries in his journal about how he'd 'never be able to live with the memories of what they did to those kids.'"

Max shook her head, visibly impressed. "You stuck around to do that for him?"

"Yeah, well, I guess I must have been designed with an overly-developed sense of loyalty. All of my instincts and all of my training told me to keep moving, but somehow I guess I figured I owed the guy. He got a new name, a new job, and a new life, and Manticore will never know the difference."

Max looked down at the cup in her hands. "I wish it were so easy for us."

"Yeah, I know. Me too."

They talked for a little while longer, but Max insisted that she had to go run an errand that afternoon. After a few minutes of questions, she finally admitted that she had to go see her boss about getting her old job back. She'd already tried talking to him once before with no luck, but she figured she would give him a week or so to cool down and then try again. Though she didn't say so, Jondy imagined that anybody's boss would be pretty ticked off if one of his employees just vanished for three months without a word. 

"So," Jondy said to Logan after Max had left, "where exactly is this wonderful job my sister is trying to get back, anyway?" She was organizing her meager possessions in her backpack, preparing to move over to Max's apartment, where she was planning to stay for a while.

"Well," he said, looking up from his notes. "It's not exactly a wonderful job." He was sitting in his wheelchair again, though from the way he was balancing papers on his knee she could tell he was still wearing the exoskeleton. She guessed that old habits just died hard. "It's a bicycle package delivery service. A place called Jam Pony."

"Jam Pony?" Jondy grinned to herself. Life was definitely full of irony. She stopped what she was doing and glanced over at Milly, who was napping beneath his coffee table. "Would you mind watching my cat for just a little while? I believe I've got a little errand of my own to run."


	5. Reggie

Chapter Five:

  


Reggie

  


"Well, well, what have we here?" Normal glanced up from his clipboard as Max walked in. "Come wandering in again looking for hand-outs?" He returned his attention to signing in the package in his hand.

"Normal, I had a family--"

"I know, I know. You had a 'family emergency' which lasted for approximately three months, during which time you vanished off the face of the earth and forgot to tell anyone where you were, including your roommate and your employer." He turned and sat the package on the shelf behind of him, then returned his attention to the sign-in sheet. "I think I like Sketchy's story about you being taken prisoner by a secret government agency a little better. If you feel the need to come in and harass me again, bring me a better story, ok?"

"Normal--" He glanced up from his clipboard.

"Now, look, missy--" Then he stopped, his eyes focusing on something behind of Max, and she was startled to see a light of recognition and warmth in his eyes for just a second before he resumed his usual expression. For a moment she thought she must be losing her mind. Turning, she saw her sister walking in the door.

"Good morning, Reggie." 

_"Reggie?"_ Now Max knew she was losing her mind. 

"And to what do I owe this pleasure?" he asked, ignoring Max as Jondy walked forward just far enough to stop beside of her sister. 

"You know, I was just in town visiting family, and I thought I'd drop in and say 'hello.'" They looked each other over for a moment, each measuring the changes in the other since last she'd been in Seattle. "I was also wondering if you might do me a little favor . . . " 

"I might be able to manage that." He drew his attention back to the clipboard in his hands. He was afraid that they might be drawing an audience from the people standing around, and that was the last thing he wanted. It was best to play it casual. 

Jondy placed an arm around Max's shoulders and delivered the kicker. "Actually, I was wondering if you could give my baby sister her job back." 

Normal's head jerked up, and he very nearly dropped his clipboard. Even given the seriousness of the situation, it was all Jondy could do not to laugh. "Sister?" he said questioningly, looking as if he'd just been hit by a truck. 

Jondy grinned and nodded. 

"As in . . . " His eyes grew quite large, and Jondy nodded once more. He stood, staring first at one and then at the other and back again. Max imagined that he must be feeling about as confused as she was at the moment. Somehow he managed to close his gaping mouth. He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. "I guess I should have known," he muttered. Turning, he grabbed a package off the shelf and handed it to Max. "Hot run, 258 Clemson." He was trying to play it cool, but his hands were still shaking. 

Glancing about the room, he noticed several people watching the exchange. Though their voices had been low enough to keep the entire conversation private, it still made him uneasy. "Come on, people! Let's get moving! You slackers aren't employed here to stand around and keep the linoleum from rolling up! Bip, bip, bip!" Their audience broke up, wandering to different corners of the room, no one aware of what they had just witnessed. 

Max stared down at the package in her hands, Rydin' Forties territory, but she really didn't care. She was still in a state of shock. "Um, I'm gonna head back to my crib and get my bike. It's on the way there." 

"No need to, Max," Jondy informed her, calmly. "I swung by your place on my way over and picked up everything I thought you might need. It's waiting outside for you." Still slightly dumbfounded, Max turned and walked towards the door. Jondy stifled the rather uncharacteristic urge to giggle and turned to follow her sister. Feeling Normal's hand on her arm, she stopped. He stared at her for a moment, not quite sure what to say. He finally found words. 

"That's gang territory, you know, and things have stepped up since she . . . " He paused. "What the hell am I talking about," he muttered, shaking his head. 

"I'm sorry," Jondy said after a moment. "I didn't really mean to knock you on your ass quite like that." She paused. "Would it make you feel better if I tagged along with her?" 

"I don't know why." He sighed. "I should probably call _them_ and warn them that _she's_ coming." But he gestured towards the far wall anyway, indicating for her to take a company bike, something he rarely let his employees do. As she turned to go, Normal stopped her once more and glanced about nervously to make sure no one was watching. "Did she spend the last three months where I think she did?" he asked quietly. 

"She went to hell and back," Jondy confirmed sadly, then she turned and headed for the bicycle rack. Normal shook his head, knowing full well what her comment had meant. 

"Hot run, 1067 Lakeview," he said, shoving a package at the person nearest to him. Then he turned, walked back into his office, and practically collapsed into his desk chair. 


	6. Pinch Me

Chapter One

Chapter Six:

Pinch Me

Max was standing outside when Jondy rolled the bicycle out the door of Jam Pony. "Pinch me, 'cause I know I hafta be dreamin'."

"Sorry, baby sister. I didn't mean to startle you like that. Hey, at least you got your job back, right?" They began to pedal down the street, riding side by side.

"It just doesn't make sense, and now Normal knows, and he's cool with it. I don't even know where to start with that." She was talking more to herself than to her sister.

"Don't worry about Reggie. He's trustworthy. Your secret's safe with him."

Max glanced over at Jondy's bike. "He let you take out a company bike? And you don't even _work_ there? Now I _know_ I'm dreaming." She shook her head and was silent for a moment. "So he knows about us. How did he find out? How the heck did you meet _Normal_, of all people?"

"Well . . . it all started on a cold winter night many years ago when I caused a rather large dent in his front bumper." Max slammed on the brakes, stopping her bicycle to stare incredulously at her sister. 

"You're kidding me. That was _Normal?_" 

"Bet you never knew your boss was hiding from the same people as you, huh?" Max just stared. "Come on, Max. No parent could possibly be so cruel as to name their child 'Reagan Ronald.'" She shrugged. "Of course the flip side to that is that no one in their right mind would ever choose that name voluntarily." She grinned. "I told him he should have let me choose his new name. I think he'd make a good 'Bjorn,' don't you?"

"The hell with being pinched. I think I need to be smacked up side the head," Max mumbled to herself. Jondy grinned. 

"It is a little much to take in, isn't it?"

"You can say that again."

"I am sorry about that." Jondy sobered for a moment before continuing. "So you call him 'Normal,' eh?" She laughed as she began to pedal down the street. "I bet he absolutely hates that."

Max reached over and pinched herself on the arm as she began to follow. "Ouch." _Damn._

"So he took me to this convent and left me with a group of nuns."

"Nuns? You've got to be kidding." They'd been pedaling for a while and were only about two blocks away from the delivery point. Though the area was dangerous, neither had seen anything to make them worry. Package delivery persons were often used to deliver the goods in some of the illegal trades that went on in these areas, so they were generally left alone. Killing, harming, or even frightening too many package deliverers lessened the number who were willing to travel into these areas, and losing the means of transporting goods could kill business quicker than anything. Of course most of the people who worked at Jam Pony were too terrified of the area to realize that, for them, it was possibly one of the safer areas of the city. Unless, of course, you rode your bike into the wrong drive-by shooting.

"No, seriously, nuns. I can still remember looking out the window and seeing the statue of the Blue Lady. I thought it was a sign or something. Then again, I guess it was."

"'Pre-pubescent transgenic killing machine hidden by group of nuns,' that's a new one on me."

"Tell me about it, only in America." 

They stopped in front of an old brick building, and Max checked the address. "258 Clemson. This is it." 

Graffiti lined the front of what appeared to have been an old office building. Jondy didn't even want to hazard a guess at what it was used for now. Painted in hues of the gang colors, the walls were covered in the symbols used to mark their territory, but there were a few obscenities and doodles mixed in. Here and there mortar had chipped from between broken bricks. One section of the front wall looked as if it had survived a shoot-out, which was quite likely exactly what had happened. "We'd better not leave these out in the open." They rolled their bikes down an alley to the right of the building. Hopefully they would be less visible to anyone who might be walking down the street out front.

"On second thought, I'd better stay out here and keep an eye on our transportation," Jondy said, leaning against the wall. 

"Probably a good idea." It wasn't as if they couldn't easily run down anyone who was brave enough to try to steal their rides, but it was always easier to just avoid trouble in the first place. Max walked out of the alley, turned the corner, and climbed the broken concrete steps out front. Jondy walked forward to the corner of the building and looked out onto the street. They'd passed two children playing with a bag of marbles about three blocks down. _Definitely not somewhere I'd want to raise my kids,_ she thought. The pain came then, almost enough to cause her to double over. Tears suddenly stung at the backs of her eyelids._ Don't think about it now. Just don't think about it now._

She glanced across the street to the faces of other buildings, trying to find something to take her mind off her own heartbreak. It was hard to believe that there were families and children living in some of them. _But I guess there are worse places to grow up,_ she thought. She had personal experience with that one. _At least here they have a chance to get out, a small chance, but a chance, at least. We had to break our own way out, literally. _Seeing Max walking in her direction, she walked around the corner and out onto the street. 

"It's sad, you know? Some of these people st---"

It all happened at once. Her sensitive hearing picked up the soft 'click' at the exact same instant as Max's did. Max yelled, "Get down!" and dove around the corner, pushing her sister with her, but not before Jondy's acute eyesight caught a glimpse of the face in the window of a warehouse diagonally across the street. 

"Shit!"

The sidewalk where they had been a split second earlier was suddenly riddled with gunfire. Crouching back against the wall and moving away from the street, they watched the bullets fly by. Jondy stared out at the spot where they'd just been standing. 

"What was that all about?" Max asked as the gunfire stopped.

"It wasn't my imagination," Jondy said, mostly to herself. "Oh God! He's here, in Seattle!"

"What are you talking about? Who's--" but Jondy was already gone, sprinting around the corner of the building and across the street. "Jondy!" She watched her sister bust in the door of the warehouse and disappear inside. She crept around the corner. The gunfire had stopped, and there was no sign of anyone peeking out of any windows with a gun. She followed.

Jondy raced up the stairs, taking three steps at a time until she reached the fourth floor. She located the room and the window where the shooter had been, but it was empty. Nothing remained except for scuffmarks in the dust on the floor. She stared at the room for a heartbeat, then turned and ran down the hallway past her sister, searching for the face that had been haunting her dreams for over a year. She'd be damned if he got away again, but her search turned up nothing. Returning to the room, she found Max looking out the window and waiting for her. _So close. So damned close._

Max looked at Jondy, confusion and concern written all over her features. "What's wrong, baby sister?"

But Jondy surprised her by doing the last thing she would ever possibly have expected. She turned and rammed her fist into the wall, breaking through the drywall up to her elbow. Then she slowly removed her hand, looked over at Max, and burst into tears. 


	7. As Guilty As Sin

Chapter Seven:

As Guilty As Sin

Logan was studying the information on his computer screen when the familiar shadow fell across his keyboard. He glanced up at Max's face, the touch of a smile on his lips. "Hey." 

"Hey, yourself."

"You must read minds. I was just about to page you." He wiped a hand across his face and glanced back at the information in front of him. "You are never going to believe this one."

"Well, so far today I've learned that my boss is an ex-Manticore employee who helped my sister escape and then faked his own death in order to get a wonderful job at JamPony and keep from getting caught. What's more, Jondy and I just narrowly escaped being riddled with bullet holes in gang territory. I highly doubt that you could top anything that's happened to me today, but you can try if you'd like." He gave her a confused look, concern showing in his eyes. She shook her head. "Nevermind, long story. I'll explain it later. What has the great and powerful Eyes Only dug up on the dirt of Seattle today?"

"Donny Perez is back in town."

A rustling behind of him caught his attention, and he turned his head to see Jondy standing in the doorway. "We already know," she said. "Trust me, we already know."

"You know?" he asked in surprise. He hadn't expected the name to mean anything to either of them.

"Close personal friend," she explained. "We go way back. In fact, Max and I ran into him in Rydin' Forties territory just a little while ago." 

He looked up at Max's face, then turned back to Jondy. "He was shooting at you?"

"Yeah. I don't think he's too fond of visitors," Jondy said. "I'd hate to see what happens when the Girl Scouts drop by and try to sell him cookies." She was putting on a strong face, but Logan heard the catch in her voice, saw the shaking of her hands. He decided it was best to pretend not to notice and turned to read the information on the screen in front of him.

"Donny Perez, aka Danny Peters, aka Donald Petsky, aka Peter Donovan, aka Pete Daniels . . . well, you get the idea." Max leaned forward just a bit and caught the scent of his shampoo.

"You forgot 'Mickey Mouse,'" she put in from behind him. Logan smiled to himself, wishing that she could get just a little closer, but he shook it off. There was no use harping on what couldn't be.

"He used to be a big problem in Seattle, but a few years ago he moved down to Los Angeles. Kidnapping, murder, smuggling, extortion . . . and the list goes on and on."

"Quite a little Boy Scout, eh? I wonder what you have to do to get your merit badge in extortion?" 

"He's quite a busy man, but what it all boils down to, and the reason I thought you would want to know about this, is that he was a good buddy of our old pal Gerhardt Bronck." Max frowned. "I also have reason to believe that he may be responsible for the death of a colleague of mine in Los Angeles a little over a year ago. He called one night and said he had some important information for Eyes Only about Perez's activities. Unfortunately he was gunned down in the street before he could get it to me."

"Perez is guilty, all right. He's as guilty as sin," Jondy said softly. She had been quiet for the last few moments of the conversation, though she'd been hanging onto every word. She now sat on the floor, leaning back against the partition with her right leg spread out in front of her. She stared down at where her hands were cupped around the knee of her bent left leg, and there was a sad and distant look in her eyes. She hardly noticed Milly, who had crept up to play with the drawstring on her jacket. "Brian was standing in line at a farmer's market," she began. "He was going to buy a chicken."

She closed her eyes, trying desperately to ward off the images that clogged her brain. Gunshots. Blood. Screams, some of which, she later realized, had been her own. 

"Perez knew he was there somehow. He knew what Brian knew about him, and he decided to solve the problem himself." She hugged her knees to her chest and took a deep breath. She looked up at Max, sadness sinking into the depths of her eyes. "He had no warning. He never had a chance." _And it's all my fault,_ she amended silently. _It was all my fault._ She closed her eyes, rested her forehead on her knees, and began to shake.

Max and Logan were silent as they shared a look. Neither knew what to say. Max took a step towards her sister, but Jondy raised her head and broke the silence. "He was part of Bronck's chain of command." There were tears on her face, but Logan saw tears of anger and not of pain. In truth, they were both, but Jondy couldn't let it go now, not here. "They snitched girls off the streets of LA and sold them to the highest overseas bidders that they could find." Max walked over to her sister, leaned down, and rested a hand on her shoulder. 

"We know about that, actually. About a year ago we put Bronck out of business for running the same game in Seattle."

"So that was you, huh?" She shrugged. She felt a little bit of pride that her baby sister had helped stop that madness, but there was a twinge of regret for all that she had failed to do. "I was in San Francisco by then. I heard rumors that that business had gone bust, but I knew that they hadn't gotten Perez. He can smell trouble. Even a whiff, and he'll skip town and leave someone else holding the bag." She rubbed her eyes. It was all too much.

"I've got to go." She rose to her feet. "I've still got Reggie's bike, and I need to get it back to him." It seemed like a good enough excuse.

"Jondy, are you okay?" Max lay a hand on her sister's shoulder. "If you--"

Just then the door opened, and Logan reached over and turned off the computer screen. Footsteps moved towards the room, and a voice called out, "Hey Logan, I got those--" A blonde haired woman turned the corner, her voice stopping mid-statement as her gaze fell on Max and Jondy. In her hand she carried a very thick, yet tattered and dirty envelope. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt." She glanced in Logan's direction just a moment too late to see that he was hiding something.

"Oh, it's okay, nothing important." Max tried a half-hearted smile. "We were actually just about to leave." The woman looked doubtful.

"No, really," Logan assured her. "It's okay." He gestured towards Jondy. "Asha, this is Max's . . . friend, Jondy. Jondy, my friend Asha." Asha raised an eyebrow at the word _friend_. Jondy figured that she must know, too. _So this is Asha,_ she thought to herself. They shook hands and exchanged 'nice to meet you's. 

Asha smiled and turned her attention to Logan. "Hey, I'll just go lay these in by the others and go take a shower, okay?"

"No, it's okay. I'm going to want to have a look at them in a minute, so you can just leave them in here."

"Suit yourself." She leaned over and dropped them beside of Logan's keyboard, brushing a hand against his shoulder as she walked behind of him and into the next room. Logan looked slightly ill at ease. Max looked as if she were going to be sick. _Interesting._ There was an awkward moment of silence. Jondy decided to break it. She unzipped her backpack and called Milly, who walked over to her owner at a leisurely pace and allowed herself to be put into one of the pockets. 

"I guess I'll just take my stuff along too, since I left it here this morning. Thanks for not throwing me out on my ear."

"Well, all things considered, I'm not so sure I'd want to try that. I'd probably end up on the losing end." Jondy smiled, or at least tried to, then she and Max turned and walked out the door. Glancing back over her shoulder, she caught Logan jerk his gaze back to the darkened computer screen, but she'd caught him watching Max as they walked away, that same expression on his face, a much stronger version of the one she'd seen on Asha's only moments before. 

"We're closed!" Normal yelled at the banging out front. He was sitting in his office with his feet propped up on his desk eating a rather greasy looking sub. He was watching _Cops_, and he didn't feel like being interrupted. The banging continued.

"Oh, for the love of Mike," he mumbled and walked outside. Seeing the two faces on the other side of the door, he opened it. "Just in case you hadn't noticed, you're a little late," he muttered.

"Sorry," Jondy explained. "We'd have been back sooner but someone down on Clemson decided to try to turn us into blocks of transgenic Swiss cheese."

He wrinkled his brow. "Are you two okay--wait, stupid question. Are they okay?"

Jondy grinned. "Little bastard got away." She wrinkled her nose. "Good thing, too, 'cause he really pissed me off." She shrugged. "Anyway, I thought you'd want the bike back." She rolled it across the room and returned it to the bike rack.

As she walked away, Normal turned to look at Max. He stuck a finger in her face. "Now don't think this gives you any special privileges, missy. You work, just like everyone else. You show up on time, just like everyone else. You get paid, just like everyone else."

Max raised an eyebrow. She found it amusing and strangely relieving that even though he knew what she was, he didn't seem to be the least bit nervous around her. It was nice to be treated as an average human being, even by Normal. "Come on, Normal, lay off my back." He opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head. Jondy returned from the far side of the room.

"Honestly, Reggie, using that tone of voice with two helpless little things like us? You should be ashamed of yourself."

"Helpless? I seem to remember you taking out a two hundred and seventy-five pound mugger at the age of twelve. Helpless, my ass."

"Yeah, well," she added with a mischievous grin. "You never know when Max might just . . . snap." She accented the last word by jumping forward slightly in Normal's direction. He didn't budge. He'd known her far too long to fall for that one.

"Not that I don't think she could if she wanted to." He shook his head. "I've seen her when she's mad, but somehow, with the two of you around, I have a feeling that I am probably the safest person on this planet." Jondy shook her head as she and Max walked back to the door.

"Great," Normal muttered to himself, "now I've got two of them to worry about."

"I heard that, _Normal,_" Jondy called back at him.

"Great. First 'Reggie,' and now this." He shook his head. "Why can't you just call me 'Ray,' like everybody else?" he called after her.

Jondy turned and shrugged, a childish grin on her face. It warmed his heart a bit to see it. She'd never really smiled like that when she was a child.


	8. Two Steps Behind and Closing

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight:

Two Steps Behind and Closing

Max watched Milly explore the kitchen as Jondy unpacked her backpack. They had had problems with rodents in the building in the past, and she wondered if the cat might prove useful during her stay, but considering the way that Milly was rubbing her head affectionately against the corner of the kitchen counter, she somehow doubted it. Max leaned over to scratch the cat behind the ears, then turned and watched Jondy unpack. 

"Are you sure your roommate won't mind?" Jondy asked again. It wasn't that she didn't trust Original Cindy's word on it, she was just surprised. When she and Max had wandered into Crash earlier that evening, Max had quickly spotted Original Cindy at the bar, leaned over, and asked, "Hey homegirl, you mind if my genetically engineered super soldier sister crashes at our place for a while?" Original Cindy's only response had been, "S'aiight with me, boo, just so long as she don't hog the shower. Original Cindy don't want to have to put a smackdown on _anybody's _ass _that_ early in the morning." Jondy was still a little amused by the coolness of her response. Most people would have been worried about a little more than the shower schedule if they had a transgenic guest from out of town.

"Not a problem," Max assured her once again as she walked towards her bedroom door.

It was amazing just how much her sister seemed to be able to fit into the backpack, and as Max watched her pull out one thing after another, she had to wonder if she'd managed to fit her entire wardrobe inside the bag. Walking over to the bed, Max picked up a stuffed green parrot that had just emerged from Jondy's backpack. She turned it over in her hands.

"That would be Andy," Jondy explained.

"Andy?"

"Yeah, the nuns gave him to me my first night at the convent. I didn't have a clue what I was supposed to do with him." She smiled at the memory. "Of course, they didn't exactly know what to do with me, either. Not too many transgenic orphans stopped by there, you know."

Max frowned, looking down at the stuffed toy. "Orphans. I guess we were orphans, weren't we?"

"In a manner of speaking." She paused for a moment, then thought aloud, "can you honestly be an orphan if you didn't have parents in the first place? We had family, at least, not that we got to stay together." She looked down at the shirt she held in her hands. _Family. Parents. Babies._

Max sat the toy down back down on the bed and was silent for a moment. "So they didn't freak out when they found out what you were?"

"I don't know what they really thought of me. I mean, they had to know something was going on. There I was, a little kid with a buzz cut, a barcode, and a hospital gown." She shook her head. "He told them not to let _anyone_ know I was there. I was obedient to a fault. I never talked back, and then there was the time I tried to salute Sister Mary Catherine. It was a reflex." She shrugged and smiled wistfully at the memory. "I was definitely _not_ a normal little girl. I hardly ever slept. I could see in the dark and hear things long before they could." She sighed. "Then there was the day that I stole a chocolate chip cookie from Sister Sophia. She had just baked them, and I was starting to figure out that little kids weren't supposed to be perfect little soldiers." She laughed. "Manticore is nothing when compared to a pissed off nun brandishing a wooden spoon, let me tell you. I ran like hell, so she never had a chance to catch me, but after that, I'm sure they knew what I was. No normal child could ever run that fast." She walked over and hung the last of her clothes in Max's closet.

Max studied her sister. Jondy looked exhausted, though emotionally moreso than physically. She figured that she probably needed a break. Looking out through the doorway of her bedroom, Max's eyes fell on her motorcycle, and she grinned. "Hey, baby sister, there's something I want to show you. Wanna go for a ride?"

"Beautiful," Jondy murmured as she looked down at the lights of Seattle. "It's amazing. You look down at all of those lights and think that each one of them is a room, or a house, or a car, each one with different people, different lives of their own." She sighed. "It's sort of like the High Place, only all this is real, not just some childhood fantasy."

"I like to come up here and watch them. After a while, you start to feel like you're one of them, just another regular person, with another regular life." Jondy glanced over at her sister. She knew exactly why Max had brought her here, but she wasn't quite ready to talk about it yet.

"So, you and Logan met when you broke into his apartment, eh?" Jondy shook her head. "Of all the ways to meet a guy. Leave it to you to come up with something completely unorthodox." Jondy grinned.

"Yeah, well, I needed some extra cash. I had this private investigator trying to dig up info on what happened to you guys, and he kept raising his price." She shook her head. "That just turned out to be a big mess. Lydecker caught up with him and used him to trail me, and I barely got out of that one."

Jondy sighed, looking back out over the lights of the city. "No matter where you go, and no matter what you do, the past is always following right behind of you." _I'm so desperately tired of that feeling._ "Mine's even following me to Seattle." Max expected her to say more, but Jondy remained silent. "So how'd he react when he found out the truth about you?" she finally asked.

"Well, he had his suspicions all along. A couple of years ago Eyes Only got an anonymous report from some lab tech about Manticore and our escape in '09, and I think I made quite an impression on him when I broke in. He called me 'Rocky the Flying Squirrel.'" She smiled at the memory. "I guess that makes him Bullwinkle. I don't know. A little fancy maneuvering, and he got a look at the designer label on the back of my neck. It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life." She shook her head. "I didn't know if I could trust him or not, and I didn't feel like running anymore. In the end, he just wanted to cut a deal. I'd help him; he'd help me. He turned out to be a lot more trustworthy than the guy I was paying."

__

Lab tech . . . Bells jingled in the back of Jondy's mind, something a little too familiar. She was silent for a moment, thinking about it all. She finally spoke. "You love him, don't you?" Deep down, she somehow expected her sister to deny it, but Max didn't say a word, she only stared out over the lights of the broken city that lay below. 

"It doesn't matter anyway," Max said quietly. "If there was ever a chance, it's gone now."

"How can it not matter?" Jondy asked, trying to control the sudden sting of tears at the backs of her eyes.

Max took a deep breath. "When I was at Manticore, they--"

"I know, I know," Jondy interrupted. "Logan already told me." She shook her head. "This one little thing, and you just roll over and give up?"

"It's not a _little_ thing." Max felt her anger rising, but she held it in check. Her anger wasn't towards Jondy, so she shouldn't unleash it on her. "We tried once. We found this lab tech that was going to fix it all . . . " she paused and shook the memory from her head. She didn't really want to go into the story full-length. It still hurt too much. "Let's just say it didn't work out, and opportunities like that don't grow on trees." She glanced back down at her hands. She felt helpless and weak, and Max hated feeling that way. 

"So that's it? You just roll over and give up and let Manticore _win_? Is that it?"

"Well, what the hell are we supposed to do?" Max almost yelled it. She wanted to yell, to stand up there on the top of the Space Needle and scream at the top of her lungs about the injustices of the world, but in the end it wouldn't do any good. It wouldn't change anything. She took another deep breath. "We don't have that chance anymore, and now there's Asha . . . " She dropped her forehead into her hands. "God, but I hate her guts . . . but I want him to be happy. Every time I see her, it's all I can do not to bash her face in." She closed her eyes. "I just don't want him to hurt the way that I do when I wake up in the morning." She paused for a moment then sighed. _Waking up_, yet another reason not to sleep. "I tried too, you know? I tried to move on, to pretend that I could care about someone else. Who the hell was I kidding? That lasted five minutes, and I felt like a fool when it was over."

Jondy loved her sister to death, but she had to say it. "You little idiot." Max's head shot up. "Do you have any idea how he looks at you? Are you possibly that blind? You walk into the room, and his face lights up. Do you know what he went through last night? He was a wreck when I got there. I don't know how he kept from falling into pieces."

"Well there's nothing that we can do about it," she snapped. Oh, but how she wished there were . . . She hung her head down and stared at her hands. "I'm sorry."

Jondy came to a conclusion. She needed to tell Max the truth, and maybe more for Max's sake than for her own. She took a deep breath and looked back out over the city.

"I recognized Logan's name, you know. Brian used to talk about him every now and then. I knew he worked for Eyes Only, but I didn't know that he _was_ Eyes Only. I don't know whether or not Brian did, either." It hurt to look back, but she had to.

"It all started about a year and a half ago," Jondy began. "I was living in Los Angeles at the time. I was walking to this bar where I worked, and a white van started following me. I was a little worried, but it didn't seem like Manticore's style, so I figured it wasn't anything to worry about. The next thing I knew, four guys jumped out, grabbed me, and tried to pull me inside." She rubbed her hands along her arms, using the friction to generate heat. The contact was a comfort, even though she wasn't cold. "Unfortunately for them, I didn't make a very good damsel in distress, and it didn't take me very long to convince them that I wasn't interested in going for a joy ride." She smiled sadly at the memory. "They jumped back in the van and took off. That was the first time I ever saw Donny Perez, and I am happy to say that I thoroughly beat the snot out of the little bastard."

She looked down at her hands, which she had propped on her knees. "It happened about five blocks from the bar where I worked, and once I was sure they had left, I just kept going. About a block down, I noticed this man following me. It was unnerving, considering what had just happened, but he kept his distance, so I didn't bother him. After I got to the bar, he followed me in, and he sat in a corner and watched me for the rest of the evening. When I took my break, he came over and sat on the stool next to mine, but he never said a word. He stayed there until I got off of work. Then he asked if he could talk to me. I don't know why I said 'yes,' but we sat, and we talked." She paused a moment, trying to get beyond the pain that still followed so clearly with the memory. She'd promised herself that she'd get it all out. She had to.

"He had the most incredible brown eyes that I had ever seen, the kind you can just melt right into. He said his name was Brian." She paused, savoring the memory for a moment. "You know what he talked about?" She turned her head to look at her sister. Max shook her head. "His grandmother. His uncle. This collie that he had when he was a little boy. His father's collection of toy trains. We just sat there and talked all night long, and then he took me out, and we watched the sunrise." 

She hugged her knees to her chest, careful to keep her balance on the slanting roof of the Space Needle. "He met me there every night for a week, and he'd wait until I got off of work, and then we'd talk until dawn and go watch the sunrise together. Then one morning, right as the sun was coming up, he leaned over, and he kissed me." She smiled sadly at the memory. "I was so giddy that I didn't even realize he'd pulled my hair aside until it was too late."

She shook her head. "I was all prepared to tell him some story about how it was just some stupid tattoo my friends and I had decided to get when we turned sixteen, but he just sat there and stared at it. I couldn't move. Then he just put my hair back like it was, took my face in his hands and said, 'it's okay.' It scared me because I knew that he knew what it meant." She shrugged. "I didn't know what to expect after that, but there he was the next night, waiting for me to get off work. That's the night that he finally told me the truth." 

Somewhere in the back of her mind, the memory of the sound of his voice permeated her thoughts. She shook it off and forged on. "He'd been trailing the men in the van, and he'd seen me take them out and gotten curious. He said he had a friend of a friend who knew some guy who claimed to have worked for something called 'Project Manticore' a while back. He said something about passing that information on 'up the ladder,' and since Logan knew about you, I can only guess he meant to Eyes Only. He told me what Perez and his goons were up to, kidnapping young girls and selling them overseas. A friend of his had lost a niece to them, and Brian was trying to stop them. Maybe they couldn't get that little girl back, but if they could stop them from doing it again, then it would at least be some small victory. He told me that he needed my help." She paused, batting back the glimmer of tears as they stung the backs of her eyelids. "And he told me that he loved me."

Max resisted the urge to put a hand on her sister's shoulder. She didn't really know how to react to what her sister was saying, but somehow she knew that comforting her might stop her from getting it all out, which was what Jondy so desperately needed to do. She scooted a little closer to Jondy's side, hoping that being closer might give her sister just a little more strength.

"At the time, I thought it was one of the funniest moments of my life. Most guys use that line to try to get you into bed, and here was a guy using it to try to get me to kick some bad guys' asses? That was a new one on me, but I didn't want any part of it. I just wanted to live my life, to stay under the smokescreen and hope Manticore never came looking for me." She turned and glanced at Max, then turned her head to stare back out into the night. "On the way home that morning, I saw a group of girls walking to school, and all I could think about was the girls that Perez had already grabbed. Had they been walking home from school? Did their parents sit up at night and wonder what had happened to them? Did their classmates sit in the middle of their classes and stare at the empty desks where they used to sit? When Brian showed up at the bar again that night, I told him I'd help. He gave me a list of names and addresses, people he thought were involved with the things that were going on. I spent many an hour hanging upside down outside of apartment windows, and God, but I hate hanging upside down."

"I know the feeling," Max muttered. "Believe me, I know the feeling."

Jondy shrugged. "I didn't really learn a whole lot hanging out around those apartments. I mean, I picked up a few names here and there, but a lot of the leads were dead ends." She swallowed. "But things were . . . getting interesting . . . with Brian . . ." She let her voice trail off, not quite sure how she wanted to complete the thought. "When did you know, Max?" Jondy finally asked, her voice eerily quiet. "When did you know you loved him?"

Max was silent for a moment. "I really don't know." She shook her head sadly. "Long before I admitted it to myself," she finally answered. "With our childhood, with our training, with living on the run and everything, I learned how to hide my emotions pretty well. I guess we all did." She shrugged. "Hell, I even hid them from myself for a while." She smiled sadly. "It took Original Cindy, a bad night, and . . . and a rather ugly experience to make me realize it." She glanced back down at the city below, her thoughts drifting back to that night. Logan's troubled face looking down at her. Trying to find the strength to push the words out of her mouth. Knowing that she was dying, and yet somehow only those three little words seemed to matter. Then the feeling of floating, looking down at herself as Lydecker knocked Logan unconscious and dragged him away. They sat in silence for a moment before Jondy finally continued.

"There was this girl that worked at the bar," she began again. "Her name was Katie. She was only fifteen, and I knew she shouldn't be working there, but her father had skipped out right after the Pulse, and her Mom was too sick to work, so I didn't say anything. I kept an eye out to make sure nobody messed with her, and sometimes I'd slip some of my tip money into her pocket when she wasn't looking." Jondy shrugged. "She needed it more than I did."

"One night she went to take the trash out. I heard tires squealing, her calling for help. No one else could, of course, but when I jumped the counter and went running out the door, Brian knew something was up and followed. Thankfully the street outside was pretty much deserted because I imagine that I would have put on quite a show for anyone who was watching, but I managed to keep them from taking Katie. Unfortunately, they recognized me, and they got a pretty good look at Brian, especially when they realized he was with me." She shook her head. "I should have realized what danger he was in right then, but I didn't, little fool that I was."

She rubbed her aching eyes. "I took Katie home and convinced our boss that she needed a few days off. The next night at the bar was stressful. I kept expecting Perez and his buddies to show up and make trouble, but they never showed." She frowned. "Brian didn't show, either." She hugged her legs tighter against her body.

"He was nowhere to be found the next day. I spent the rest of the day and most of the next night scouring the streets, climbing every tall building I could find to get a better look. After hanging around outside of one of the apartments we'd been keeping an eye on, I finally found a couple of Perez's buddies, and I followed them down to the pier." She sighed. "To make a long story short, I broke up their little party, and we all ended up trapped in a van that was sinking into the Pacific. They had Brian gagged and tied up, but I managed to get him out. I never saw anyone else get out of that van. I figured that they didn't make it out."_ Careless_, she thought. _Careless and stupid. Never underestimate the enemy._

"We thought it was over. No more little girls were going to come up missing. No more parents would stay awake at night and wonder if their daughters were even still alive, but I didn't care. I was just too happy to see Brian alive, and well . . . " She shrugged, her voice trailing off sadly. "Let's just say we got _really _happy that he was still alive and that the whole mess was over. Of course reality set in the next morning. It was my fault. If it hadn't been for me, they would never have even known about Brian. I was the one who had exposed him. I was responsible for what they almost did." Max put a hand on her sister's shoulder. 

"It wasn't. It was his fi-- "

"He was safer without me," Jondy insisted, ignoring her sister. "That's what I told him when I left his apartment that morning, that I was too dangerous, that I'd almost gotten him killed. All I could think was, what if Manticore came looking for me and got him instead? I would never have been able to forgive myself, so I turned and walked away from that apartment. He kept begging me to come back, telling me he loved me, that it wasn't my fault. I didn't listen." A tear slid down her cheek. "I hated myself for it. It tore me apart to walk away, but I didn't think I had a choice." Another tear slid along the trail of the first. She hugged her knees more tightly to her chest. "I went and stayed with Zane for a few weeks." She looked back down at the lights below. A few more moments passed in silence.

"Know when I finally admitted that I loved him?" she finally asked. Max reached over and took her sister's hand. "When the pregnancy test came out positive."

"Oh God." Max hadn't meant to say it out loud, but it came out anyway.

"It's funny, the things that you don't let yourself admit to. All of the sudden, I was standing in Zane's bathroom, laughing my ass off. I think Zane thought I was losing my mind. Chessa was running around in circles barking. The old lady that lived upstairs was pounding on the floor, and Milly was hiding under the sofa. She must have thought the world was coming to an end. I thought it was the happiest day of my life." She shook her head in self-disgust. "I went back to find him, but he wasn't at his apartment, so I wandered around the streets for an hour or so, waiting for him to come back, planning how I was going to tell him. I wandered down by the farmer's market, and looked over, and there he was. I'll never forget the look on his face. He looked up and saw me, and it lit up like a light bulb. I wanted to cry, I was so glad to see him." She swallowed back a sob. "And then all hell broke loose." Two more tears slid down her cheeks.

"There were gunshots. People started screaming and diving for cover." The images floated through her mind, Brian's body jerking backwards, two red spots appearing on his shirt front even as he fell, Perez's ugly face appearing in the window across the street, an evil grin on his face and a gun in his hand. Her own screams. "By the time I ran over to him, he was already gone. I tried to get up, to go after him, but everything started going black. The next thing I remember is waking up in Zane's apartment the next day. Zane had gotten another one of those _feelings_ he always got when we were kids and followed me. Perez had shot me when I ran over to Brian, multiple times, actually, but I was so upset that I didn't even feel it. I'd lost a lot of blood, not that that was a problem for me, but the baby . . . . " Another tear, a sob. "I miscarried, and I lost the last part of him that I had left," she whispered.

The tears ran freely down her face now, but she didn't seem to notice. "I left, and he never had the chance to tell me when he found out that Perez was still out there. If I would have stayed just a little longer, just a few more days, I would have known. I could have been there five minutes earlier, and he wouldn't have died." The lights of the city below were nothing more than a blur now. "Zane left me at his apartment, called in sick for the next few days, and searched Los Angeles. He didn't find anything because Perez had already skipped town. I couldn't stand to stay in LA. There were too many memories, so Zane helped me move to San Francisco, and that's where I stayed until February."

Her shoulders shook, another sob. "I've tried to put it all behind me, but no matter where I go or what I do, the memories are still there, and I can't make them go away. The past is always there, just two steps behind, and now it's closing in." Jondy turned sideways to cry on Max's offered shoulder. It could have been seconds, minutes, hours, but she was so lost in her grief that she lost all sense of time. Finally she pulled away, trying to wipe the tears from her face with the back of her hand. She stared back out over the city, trying desperately to regain control, to find a way to make Max understand what she so desperately needed to.

She wiped the remaining tears away with her sleeve and looked her sister straight in the eye. "So how can you not get it, Max?" Jondy asked, her voice almost a whisper. Max gave her a confused look. "Do you have any idea how much I envy the two of you? Logan is alive. He's _alive_, and you just give up without a fight. Maybe you've got a snowball's chance in hell, but dammit that's a chance. Don't just give up and roll over and die, because one of these days you may wake up and realize just how precious that melting snowball was, and you'll spend the rest of your life hating yourself because you just let it melt."

With that, Jondy stood, turned, and crept back along the roof the way they'd come, leaving a rather astonished Max alone in the darkness.

**__**


	9. Adversaries

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine:

Adversaries

Jondy put a hand on her hip and stared down at her adversary. "Don't even think about it, mouse-breath." The feline in question merely lifted her paw and began to give it a rather thorough cleaning. Jondy shook her head.

"No way, girl. Trust me, this is not a good day for you to be tagging along." Milly put down her paw and snuggled down deeper into the pocket of her owner's backpack. Jondy stared down at her for a moment and then shrugged. "Fine then, tag along." She leaned over and stuck a finger in the cat's face. "But don't come crying to me if something happens, and you get hurt." Milly looked up, an expression of feline innocence on her furry face. "Some good you would have done at Manticore," Jondy mumbled, placing her hand back on her hip. "Yes, sir, Colonel Lydecker, sir," she said in a mocking tone. "My cat insists upon coming on this reconnaissance mission, sir. Sheesh!" Only when Jondy turned to walk back towards the kitchen and the waiting pot of coffee did she realize that she had an audience.

Max and Original Cindy stood in the doorway. Original Cindy took a sip from her steaming mug, held up a hand, and announced, "I ain't even askin'" before turning and walking into her bedroom to get dressed for work. Max simply took a drink from the glass of milk in her hand and raised an eyebrow.

"Insubordinate little cuss," Jondy said with a grin. She walked towards the kitchen. "You know, the CIA tried to train cats to be spies way back during the Cold War. It didn't work though," she turned her head just enough to deliver the next barb back over her shoulder. "They had minds of their own, and they kept running in front of taxis!"

Milly emitted what could only be described as a feline version of "hmmph!" twitched her tail, and disappeared into the backpack once again. Jondy sighed and reached for a cup of coffee. Max sat down her now-empty milk glass and reached for her own coffee cup. "Do I want to know what that was all about?"

Jondy sipped her coffee. "Today I'm going to find out what Perez is doing in Seattle. So far, I know he's been on Clemson, and the other day I thought I saw him over on South Market. The little sleazeball has to be hanging around somewhere, and I'm going to find out where." She glanced back through the doorway. "Unfortunately, Milly has it in her head that she will be tagging along."

"So, can't you just leave the cat here?" Max took a bite out of her bagel.

"Wouldn't work. She'll never forgive me, and then she'll give me the silent treatment for a week, and I just don't want to go through that again." 

"Again?" Jondy grinned at Max's bemused expression.

"Like I said, she has a mind of her own. I've learned from past experience." She reached across the table and took a bagel of her own from the bag.

"Uh-huh . . . " Max looked, and sounded, skeptical. She sat down her coffee cup and gave her sister a concerned look. "Jondy, are you sure you're okay?"

Jondy sighed, the grin sliding off her face. "I'll survive." She swallowed and stared down at the air holes in the bagel in her hand. "We were made to survive, right?" Max stood and walked around the counter to give her sister a hug. 

"I know I can't bring him back," Jondy said after a long moment. She was having trouble pushing out the words around the lump in her throat. "But I can stop that son of a bitch, and so help me God, I will. He will never do this to anyone else ever again." 

Max pulled back, expecting to see pain or tears in Jondy's eyes, but all she saw was determination. Jondy wasn't about to give in, and for a moment Max was ashamed of herself for holding the thought that she might. She'd known her sister's strength and determination for far too long to start to doubt her now.

Jondy crept down the alley, blending carefully into the shadows. She'd spent the day slipping in and out of alleys in some of the busier sections of the city, being careful not to be seen. Now, as the sun was beginning to set, she was searching for clues in the nooks and crannies along South Market where Perez had disappeared from view two days earlier. She was hoping that he had some connection to this area, but she didn't know what. He had to have been there for a reason, and he couldn't have been there to throw her off course when he didn't even know she was in Seattle. He couldn't have known when she'd only just gotten there, could he?

__

But what was he doing on Clemson? she asked herself for the millionth time that day. It couldn't have been a setup. That was impossible. Perez would have had no way of knowing that she would venture into Rydin' Forties turf that day, and even if he knew of her weak connection to Jam Pony and had sent the package himself, he would have had no way of knowing that she would have anything to do with that run. She frowned. It just didn't make any sense. 

Stepping out of the shadows, she made her way back down the alley. There were no clues here to find, but as she glanced out onto the street, she found that she was no longer alone. Walking towards her was a rather husky-looking man. _Oh great._ She pondered her options for a moment. He was certainly large and an obvious threat to anyone her size . . . except for an X5, of course. She could take him down easily enough, but she wasn't sure that she wanted to bring unnecessary attention to herself, and she hoped that she could get out of the situation without having to do so. She loosened the straps on her backpack, hoping that if he decided to grab the bag, it would slide right off of her shoulders so that Milly would be less likely to be hurt. She tried to play it cool as she walked back towards the street.

As she approached and passed the man, he made no move towards her, but his eyes followed her down the alley. The moment he passed behind her line of vision, he made his move, jerking her backpack upward. Jondy tucked in her arms and let it slide off her shoulders. She turned around to face him, trying not to show by her stance that she was fully capable of kicking his ass in three seconds or less.

"Well, well, little girlie, what have we here?" His voice was raspy and low with a strange sort of glee mixed in. He knew that his size was intimidating, and he apparently enjoyed pushing his weight around. He held the backpack out in front of her, then dangled it above her head, just out of reach, or so he thought.

Jondy placed her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side_. Just what I need, _she thought._ Six feet, two hundred and fifty pounds of brawn, and only three ounces of brains to go with it._ "I wouldn't do that if I were you," she said in calm annoyance.

"And what are you gonna do, little girlie girl, girlie girl," he chanted, swinging the backpack from side to side for a moment. He reached over to unzip a pocket. "You got any money, blondie?"

"Don't mess with my stuff. I'm warning you." He chuckled as if he found the thought of her threats amusing. 

"Girlie girl," he chanted again. Jondy shrugged.

"Last warning. Don't mess with my cat." The man gave her a cocky grin, his eyes sliding down over her slim body in a way that made her want to retch, and reached his arm down into the pocket he had just unzipped. Milly, who was getting rather annoyed at being jerked around in her pouch, yowled and leapt away from his grip, leaving him with several scratches on her way out. He threw down the backpack and reached for the gun at his waist as Milly took off down the alley in the opposite direction. 

"Stupid little bi--"

He never finished his thought. Jondy sprang into action, spinning through the air and catching him by surprise. One foot kicked the gun from his hand and sent it spinning off into the shadows. The other connected solidly with his chin, knocking him back against the building at one side of the alley. Before he could register what was happening, she was already ramming a fist into his gut, knocking the air from his lungs. Grabbing the arm he raised in a useless attempt to ward her off, she swung him through the air, his body making a "thump" as it slammed into the metal dumpster across the alley. He slid down to the ground in a motionless heap.

Jondy stood, hands on her hips, and looked down at the unconscious man. She shook her head, strangely disappointed that the entire episode hadn't even caused a shortness of her breath. She prodded his inert body with her foot and checked to be sure that no one had witnessed what had just happened. "Now see," she said, annoyance in her voice. "I _told_ you not to mess with my cat." Turning around, she leaned over to retrieve her backpack and went off to find Milly.

Perez was furious. He paced back and forth across the floor of the abandoned apartment, his shoes thumping against the uncovered hardwood floor. "So what the hell happened, Bender?" he demanded of the man in front of him. Bender's nose was still bleeding from the force of being thrown against a dumpster, and his hand was throbbing from the impact of the foot Jondy had used to kick the gun from his grasp. There was a matching throbbing in his head.

"I told you, boss," he said again. "Three guys came out of the alley and--" 

"I did not tell you to pick a fight with 'three guys,'" Perez interrupted. "I told you to hang around South Market and keep a lookout for that nosey little blonde bitch, and then follow her when she showed!" he yelled into Bender's face. "What part of that is too difficult for you to understand?" He paced back across the room and reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette. "She saw me there the other day, and I know she'll be back." He stopped to glare at Bender. "Are you lying to me? Was she the one who did this?"

Bender's stomach dropped. There was no way in hell that he was going to admit that one little girl had done this to him. "No sir, boss. It's like I told you, see, I thought I saw her and I followed her into this alley, and the next thing I know, these three guys are roughing me up." Bender puffed his chest out. "Ain't no way some little girlie girl is gonna take me out."

Perez looked down at the cigarette he still held in his hands. "Yeah, well, I don't know who or what the hell she is, but this one could if she wanted to." He crumpled the empty cigarette pack in his hand. "Would have been easier if the little bitch would have died in LA like she was 'sposed to." He paced back across the room. "And what the hell was she doing on Clemson?" Perez ground his teeth. He knew the woman didn't work for Jam Pony because she hadn't had the proper ID badge. He wished he would have gotten a better look at the brunette, but he'd been so distracted when the blonde showed up. . . _Shit!_ He was going to have to keep an eye on Jam Pony, just in case she showed up.

He turned and paced back over to Bender. "And what am I supposed to do with you? I can't very well send you back out there. If she's seen you, she knows you're up to something, so you're no good to me anymore."

Bender was about to respond when a third man strode purposefully into the room. His arms were covered in tattoos and scars, leaving him with a rather rough appearance. One large scar across his forehead indicated that at some time in his life he had been in a knife fight, and this wound had probably cut down to the bone. The bulges in his loose clothing indicated that he was heavily armed, and he made no attempt to hide it. Perez turned to face his visitor. "And what do you want?" he asked irritably.

"We had a deal," the man ground out angrily. "You aren't following up on your end of it." Perez finally placed the cigarette between his lips and lit it with a match. He took a puff and stared at the man in front of him.

"Our _deal_ involved certain information which I have yet to receive. I've been carrying out my end of the bargain. Three of your five _friends_ are out of the way, but I haven't received anything from you yet, Skull."

The other man leaned forward, closer to Perez. Several gold chains fell forward and sparkled in the lamplight, and another ugly knife scar became visible through the armhole of his wife-beater, the trophy from a past victory. "And how do I know you'll finish the job if I give you what you want now? Everything was set up yesterday. He was right there at the door when he got the package, a clean shot, and what do you do? Go after the delivery girl. You were supposed to get Ice, not some ho on a bicycle," he snarled. Perez blinked and calmly returned the cigarette to his lips.

"Well, it's like this. Until I have some indication that you will be upholding your end of the deal, I'm going to be awfully worried. I'm the best shot on the west coast, and I dearly love my work, but when I'm nervous, sometimes my aim goes off." He paused a moment before adding his final blow. "Of course, if you aren't willing to carry out your end of the deal, I could always let your . . . _friends _know about our . . . negotiations. I'm sure they'd be interested."

Skull straightened and made a quick move for the gun hidden at his waist, but not quick enough. By the time he had trained his gun on the other man, three armed men had stepped out of the shadows behind of Perez, all with guns drawn. Perez calmly lifted the cigarette to his lips and took another drag. Skull pondered the situation for a moment, then slowly returned the gun to his pocket.

"I trust that you will be getting me that information, Skull," Perez said calmly. 

"And I trust that you will be fulfilling your end of the bargain." He leaned forward slightly. Though Perez's men still had guns trained on him, Skull didn't hesitate. He hadn't gotten as far as he had in life by backing down.

Perez was silent for a moment. "You know the way out." Skull narrowed his gaze, turned, and left.

In all of the excitement, no one noticed the shadow outside the window as it slithered back down the side of the building and disappeared into the night. 


	10. Gertie, Ethel, and a Pizza Box

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten:

Gertie, Ethel, and a Pizza Box

Logan was engrossed in the information on his computer screen when a door opened and closed in the distance. Jumping slightly at the sound, he reached over and flipped off the monitor, just to be safe, but when Max came around the corner carrying a pizza box, he smiled. "Chef Guevara has arrived. Dinner is served." She grinned, pulled off her coat, and opened the box.

"Great." Logan leaned over and glanced at what she had brought. The smells of pepperoni, sausage, and cheese filled his nostrils. Maybe it wasn't some gourmet meal, but he was still surprised and more than a little touched that Max had decided to feed him for a change. "It looks wonderful." She took a seat in the chair across from him, but she didn't make a move for the pizza. They sat in silence, both staring at the box in front of them, both waiting for the other to speak first. 

She'd been thinking about Jondy's warning all day. Maybe that was why she was here with this ridiculous pizza, as if it could ever possibly compare to one of his gourmet miracles. She was about to speak when a knock sounded in the distance. Thankful for the chance to avoid saying something stupid, she jumped up. "I'll get it," she announced and went to answer the door, leaving Logan alone with the pizza. A moment later she returned with Jondy following behind. She gestured towards the open pizza box. "Hey, baby sister, you want some?"

"Me? Turn down free food? You're kidding, right?" The corner of Max's mouth lifted slightly in amusement as she reached over to grab a piece of her pizza. "I stopped by your place, but Original Cindy said you were coming over here to make dinner." Jondy raised an eyebrow and glanced down at the contents of the box.

"I'm always raiding Logan's fridge, so I figured I should feed him for a change." Max took a bite of the slice in her hand. "Unfortunately my culinary talents stop short at boiling water, so this is as good as it gets."

Jondy chuckled. "I stashed Milly back at your place. She got a little roughed up today, so she decided to stick around with Original Cindy. By now she probably knows more about Xena than any living creature ever possibly should." She paused to select a piece of the pizza. "Anyway, I thought I'd better pop over and let you two know that Perez is in bed with one of the local gangs, just in case you were interested."

"What?" both said in unison. 

"He sent some goof-off to rough me up, which, needless to say, didn't go exactly as planned. When he came to, I followed him." She shook her head in disappointment. "What ever happened to the good old days when the bad guys were smart enough to keep it interesting?" She shrugged. "While I was there some guy showed up. Apparently Perez is bumping off Rydin' Forties in exchange for some information."

"What kind of information?" Jondy looked over at Logan and shrugged again.

"I have no idea," she mumbled around the piece of pizza in her mouth. She chewed and swallowed. "But that's what yesterday was all about. It was a setup. Perez was supposed to shoot some 'Ice' guy when he answered the door for the package, but when I showed up on the scene, he got a little distracted." She sighed in an exaggerated manner. "Must be my ravishing beauty," she added airily.

Logan set down his pizza slice. It occurred to Jondy that he looked rather odd eating pizza. It probably wasn't his usual style. He rolled his chair over to the computer, turned on the monitor, and began to type away. "Ice. He's Rydin' Forties, all right, and pretty high up in the chain of command, or so the word is on the street. They've been having a pretty high casualty rate lately. So far, at least three of the more powerful members have been gunned down within the last few months, Blunt Ryddim Kidz, apparently, although that's not their usual style."

"Well, they didn't do it alone. Perez was pulling the trigger." Jondy took a bite of the crust. "And things have stepped up between the gangs lately because of it. That's what Reggie was talking about the other day." Logan glanced at Max. She'd already filled him in on Jondy's connections to Normal and her past with Brian Dubetsky. He couldn't help but feel a little sympathy. He knew what it was to love someone and lose them, but Jondy couldn't live on the hope of Brian coming back. As if sensing Logan's gaze, Max turned to look at him. He averted his eyes so she wouldn't catch him watching her. 

Max shook her head. "But what connection could Perez have with the Blunt Ryddim Kidz? Bronck didn't have anything to do with gangs. He was too busy being buddies with the Sector Police." 

Logan was still typing away at his computer as he spoke. "There were a few unconfirmed reports that Bronck was storing something on the East side, over near Blunt Ryddim Kidz territory, but by the time they got to Eyes Only, the whole mess with Bronck was already over. Remember that warehouse you checked out over there Max?"

Max shook her head again. "Whatever was in it, it was empty by the time I got there."

Jondy finished her slice of pizza. "So you think the Blunt Ryddim Kidz know what was in that warehouse, or maybe where it went?"

"Maybe, or maybe they took it out themselves." Logan's brow furrowed as he sorted through possible explanations in his head.

"So they're selling that information to Perez in exchange for him bumping off Rydin' Forties?" It made sense to Max, yet something didn't sound right.

"Perez isn't the type to involve himself in that sort of thing," Jondy said, "so it must be something pretty big." She sighed and turned to face her sister. "Of course the two of us have a bigger problem than that at present."

"What's that?" Max was already two bites into another piece of pizza.

"Jam Pony." Max wrinkled her forehead. "Well, Perez was waiting for the package delivery to get a shot at Ice, so he knows how it was delivered, and since I was with you when you delivered it, he knows I've got some connection to Jam Pony." She sighed. Once again her past had endangered someone she cared about. _And this time it has nothing to do with my DNA. _"I'm going to have to do something about that. He'll probably be watching Jam Pony to see if he can find me, and I don't know how good of a look he got at you." She rubbed her eyes.

Max put down her slice of pizza. "So what are we going to do about that?"

Jondy grinned as she rose to grab the jacket she had flung into a nearby chair. "Oh, just leave that to me." She turned to leave. "Thanks for the pizza. I'll see you two later," she called back over her shoulder. _Three's a crowd,_ she grinned to herself as she walked out the door. 

From his place beside a trashcan, Fly watched the people walk by. To the world he looked like a harmless street bum, easily ignored on the streets of Seattle. Adjusting the moth-eaten coat around his shoulders, he scooted down lower against the building at his back. He'd had his eye on Jam Pony since people had first begun to arrive that morning, and so far there was no sign of the blonde, either with or without her friend. The place had opened for business hours ago, and he was starting to lose patience. He knew his boss would have even less of it than he did. 

He glanced around the street once again and saw nothing of interest. A stray dog emerged from an alley and wandered along, sniffing his way from one trashcan to the next. A bald man got out of his truck with a package, entered Jam Pony, and then came back several moments later. Farther down the street, a wino in a tattered coat made his way down the sidewalk, a suggestively shaped brown bag in his hand. His path was anything but straight. On the other side, a male Jam Pony messenger was peddling away down the street, and a young woman with green hair was walking towards him. He paused to study her face for a moment before deciding that she couldn't be either of the women he was searching for. Two little old ladies stopped to pet the stray dog. His eyes followed them as one pulled a package from her large purse, and they both entered Jam Pony. Three more Jam Ponies returned from their runs, dismounting from their bicycles and pushing them inside. One was carrying a package, probably a pickup. Tires squealed out front, and he whipped his head around to see the dog narrowly miss being hit by a car. 

He checked his watch. It was late, and there was nothing here for him to see. Frowning, he walked over to a phone booth, picked up the phone, and dialed his boss's number. He'd better let him know that they hadn't come in to work. 

"I don't believe I'm doing this," Max muttered.

"I don't know. I kind of like the support hose," Jondy joked. She reached up to pick at the gray wig on her head. It was hot and annoying, but it was necessary. She'd spotted Perez's man in an instant, even in his pathetic disguise. Time hadn't changed Fly since she'd first watched him through an apartment window in LA. She smiled to herself at the way he'd fallen for the little old lady bit, especially when they'd stopped to pet the dog.

"Where the fire truck is Max?" Normal yelled through the racket of a busy workplace. No one answered. Spotting the two ladies walking towards him, he turned and put on a smile.

"Welcome to Jam Pony, ladies. How may I--"

"Would you can the speech, Reggie?" Jondy whispered. Normal squinted for a moment, then rolled his eyes.

"Do I want to ask?"

"Not out here. Office. Now." Shaking his head, he led the way into his office as Jondy and Max followed, doing their best to fake old-lady-hobbles. After they entered the office, he closed the door behind of them and raised an eyebrow.

"What is all this about?"

Jondy leaned back against his desk. "Actually, this is about keeping you in business and you and your employees alive." She crossed her arms in front of her.

"Yeah." He sounded skeptical. "And may I ask how you two coming in here dressed like Gertie and Ethel are going to help me do that?"

"Because we have reason to believe that our little friend from Clemson has an eye out for us. He sent the package as part of an attempted hit in gang territory, so he knows it was from Jam Pony, and now he's probably looking for us." Jondy cocked her head to the side for emphasis.

Normal shook his head for a moment. "Great. Just great." He had to admit that having Jondy in town certainly kept things interesting, though it usually wasn't quite so interesting as this. "And what makes you believe that he's after you?" He briefly remembered the cable hack which had interrupted his favorite TV show earlier that year. The mention of X5's by Eyes Only had surprised him at the time, but he figured that Max and Jondy must have friends in high places. "Nevermind." He held up a hand. "I don't want to know." He paced across the room and rubbed a hand over his face. Boss or no boss, Jondy and Max certainly knew more about this sort of thing than he did. He sighed. "So what am I supposed to do?"

Fly and MacIntyre waited patiently as the man finished speaking with two little old ladies. "Don't worry, Mrs. Niles," he spoke loudly into the first woman's ear. "These cookies will get to your grandson." Fly figured she must be deaf or something. Several more times the woman asked for reassurance, and when they finally left, the man rolled his eyes and sighed, as if glad to be rid of them. Fly figured he understood. Old people could be rather annoying. He and MacIntyre stepped forward, trying to look more reputable than they were.

"Excuse me, sir?" The man, whom one of the women had called Mr. Ronald, turned and briefly glanced up from his clipboard before looking back down and scribbling something on a form. "Mr. Ronald, we were wondering if you might be able to assist us." Fly figured he sounded convincing enough.

The man looked up from his clipboard. "How's that?"

"We are looking for one, possibly two, of your messengers. They delivered a package to 258 Clemson on the day before yesterday," MacIntyre explained. The man flipped back through the clipboard to check his records.

"Hmmph! Those two again, eh? Well, if you find them, feel free to tell them that they're fired. I don't need any more bums and slackers around here. The ones I have now are more than enough." He turned and shoved a package at a messenger as he walked by. "1209 Bowers."

"But I was about to go on br--"

"Beat it," his boss interrupted curtly. Head hung low, the young man walked to his bicycle and exited the door. Mr. Ronald returned his attention to his visitors. "Look, as I was saying, they didn't come in to work yesterday, and I haven't seen anything of them today. I called yesterday and got a message that the phone number had been disconnected. This morning I sent someone after them, but they only found an empty apartment, so I'm afraid I can't help you." Fly pulled out his wallet and removed a fifty. He held it out suggestively, watching Mr. Ronald's eyes follow the bill as he moved it from side to side. He hesitated, then grabbed the bill. "I can, however, give you their old address." Fly smiled. _Perfect._


	11. In a New York Minute

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven:

In a New York Minute . . . 

"You know, you shouldn't leave your window open if you don't want visitors."

Logan looked up from the file in his hand to see Jondy leaning against the doorjamb. The hint of a smile touched his face. "Would you believe I've been warned before?" 

Jondy shrugged and grinned, feeling strangely as if she were missing out on the punch line of a private joke. "Sorry."

"No, it's okay." He held up a hand. "I'm used to it. Did Max come with you? I just paged her."

"Well, she was getting into the shower as I left, so she should be along in a little while." She took off her coat and sat down in a chair. "So, anything new on Perez?"

Logan frowned. "Actually, yes. I just got a report from an informant. Ice is dead." Jondy wrinkled her brow. "Single gunshot wound to the head. The shooter fired in through his bathroom window."

"Not even safe to pee anymore," Jondy muttered. She shook her head. "I should have warned him somehow."

Logan raised an eyebrow. "And exactly how would you have done that? Marched in and informed half of the gang that someone was trying to kill him?" She shrugged. 

"I don't know, but I feel like I should have done something." She frowned. 

Just then Asha entered the room wearing a coat and carrying a tattered backpack which seemed to be stuffed rather full. She sent a friendly smile in Jondy's direction. "Hi."

"Hi," Jondy returned. _This should be interesting . . . _ Asha walked over to Logan's chair.

"I'm getting ready to leave. I should be back by Friday night, okay?" She reached down and touched Logan's hand.

"Okay," he answered. Then Jondy watched as Asha smiled at Logan, leaned over, and gave him a quick peck on the lips. Jondy's eyebrows shot up. _No, sir . . . _ She watched in astonishment as they exchanged good-byes and Asha left the apartment. She leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs at the ankles and her arms in front of her. Jondy ran her tongue around her teeth. _How to phrase this . . . _

"Can I ask you a question?" she finally asked. Logan had a strange look on his face. She figured he knew the nature of the question she was about to ask. He took a deep breath.

"Okay."

"Now, keep in mind that I'm not asking this question as Max's transgenic sister who is perfectly capable of flying across this room and snapping your neck before you even know what's happening. I'm asking this question as a woman." She leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees. "What in the hell is going on in that head of yours?"

Logan turned to stare at her. Her little reminder of who and what she was had made him a tad bit nervous, but he didn't really expect her to make that sort of move. He called her bluff. "I don't see how that is any of your business."

__

Okay, if you want to be an ass about it . . . "You know what? I think it is. See, Manticore accidentally spliced in some meddling-older-sister genes when they made me, so don't even think that you're going to get out of this one." Logan turned his chair to the side and dropped the file onto his desk. He propped his elbows on top of it and turned his head to glare at her. "She loves you. Do you think you're being fair to her?"

"Well, since it's _your_ business, Max and I have already had this conversation. She was the one who wanted it this way." There was bitterness there, and it was caked in layers of hurt. If she hadn't been so close to smacking some sense into him, she might have felt a little sympathy. If that was Max's decision, he'd obviously buried his own desires to give Max what she wanted. _Sweet,_ she thought, _but incredibly stupid._

"Who the hell said anything about Max?" Logan's eyebrows knitted together. "I was talking about Asha."

"What?" 

__

Well, that took the wind out of his sails. "She loves you. That's as clear as day. The problem is that you're in love with someone else, so no, you aren't being fair to her. She deserves the truth. You're just using her to ease the heartache." Logan's face had gone blank, and Jondy had a momentary thrill at the realization that she had just knocked him on his ass, so to speak. He was quiet for a moment.

"If you're trying to tell me that I don't care about Asha--"

"I'm not saying that," she interrupted, resisting the urge to grab him and shake him. _Men!_ she thought to herself. "It's obvious that you do care about her, but not the way that she cares about you, and you know it." She gave it a moment to sink in. "Don't you think she deserves the chance to find someone who can care about her that way?"

She expected him to say something, but he only turned his head and stared at his hands. Logan looked so pitiful that she was starting to crack. She watched him for a moment and sighed. "And don't even try to say that--"

"You're right," he interrupted, his voice almost a whisper. "You're right," and he said nothing more. One minute of silence ticked by, then another. He sighed. "Sometimes it just . . . it's easier to pretend . . . when you feel so empty . . ."

"Don't even try to tell me about emptiness." Logan glanced over, making eye contact with her for the first time since the conversation had begun. The pain he saw in her eyes was leagues deeper than his own. He almost felt guilty for feeling anything at all.

"I'm sorry," he said after a moment. "Max told me . . . and I'm sorry." Jondy averted her eyes, glancing out the window. He could tell she was blinking back tears, trying not to cry. 

"There's this old song," she finally said. "It came out before I was even born. This guy's singing about how everything can change in just an instant." She swallowed. "There's this line about how 'if you find somebody to love in this world, you better hang on tooth and nail.'" She sighed and turned to look him in the eye once more, knowing that the eye contact might well bring her to tears again. It was worth the risk. "I didn't know that until it was too late." She paused. "If I could go back in time and make it so that we never met, so that I didn't have to live with this, I wouldn't change it. I wouldn't give up a moment of my time with him, no matter what's happened since." She glanced back down at her hands and took a deep breath. Tears were burning at the backs of her eyes, but she didn't want to cry in front of him. She rose and walked to the door. 

"Don't make the same mistake I made, Logan," she said without turning. She held her hand against the doorjamb for a moment to steady herself. "I'm going to go get a drink of water." She walked towards the kitchen, not knowing that Logan's eyes followed her until she was out of sight.

__

Little liar, she told herself on the way down the hall. _You know damned well that you'd give up every single moment . . . because if he'd never met you, he'd still be alive._

When Max entered the apartment several minutes later, Jondy had dried her tears. She was standing at the window in Logan's living room, looking out over the street below with a glass of water in her hand. Jondy did her best to assume a normal expression.

"Hey, baby sister," she said, turning to face Max.

"Hey," her sister answered. Something in Jondy's expression wasn't quite right, but the last few days had been rough for her, so Max decided not to push. "What's up with Logan blazin' my pager? Can't a girl take a shower anymore?"

"You spend too much time in the shower anyway. Remember the time we got extra laps because you took all morning in there?" Max punched her sister in the shoulder gently. They turned and walked back towards Logan's office.

"You know damn well that was you." Max grinned as they entered the room. Logan was looking down at the file in his hand, studying it intently, but something in his eyes said he wasn't looking at the printed page in his hands. He looked . . . shell-shocked, Max decided. "What's wrong?" she asked, concern evident in her voice. 

"I just thought I should fill you in on the latest news." He turned and typed on his keyboard, pulling up an information screen. "Ice was just killed. Shot through the window of his bathroom." Logan knew that Max could tell something was wrong. Jondy could see it too.

"He probably took too long in the shower," Jondy muttered as she lifted the glass to her lips. She was hoping to distract her sister from Logan's mood. Max simply elbowed her in the ribs, and Logan, who had overheard part of their earlier conversation, smiled. Max shook her head. If he was smiling like that he must be okay. Maybe Jondy's sadness was rubbing off on him or something?

Jondy walked over to read the information on Logan's computer screen. "Eyes Only keeps tabs on the local gangs, too, eh?"

"Well, yes and no. His main concern is the big-timers. The gangs mostly keep to themselves and don't threaten the general public. As long as it stays that way, Eyes Only will stay out of it." Jondy nodded, rested a hand on the corner of his desk, and leaned forward slightly.

"Well, that makes four. Perez said that there were five targets, so who could the other one be?"

Max shook her head, remembering a particularly interesting delivery she and Sketchy had made the previous year. "What about Tacoma Bleed?" Logan typed away on his keyboard.

"Very likely," Logan rested his chin in his hand for a moment and pondered the information on the screen. "He's the most powerful member of the Rydin' Forties left." He hit a few more keys, pulling up an information screen on Bleed. He shook his head. "He's also Ice's brother."

"As in gang, right?" Jondy put in from behind of him.

"No, as in biological."

"Well, that's going to make warning him easy," Jondy muttered sarcastically.

Max jerked her gaze away from the screen and met Jondy's eyes. "Warning him?" she repeated. "How are you going to warn him?" Jondy glanced over at the phone.

"I should have found some way to warn Ice, but I didn't, and I said I was going to stop Perez, didn't I?" She sighed. "So, has Eyes Only got a phone number for this guy?" Jondy asked. Before Logan could respond, Max was already repeating a string of numbers from memory. Jondy's surprise showed in her face.

"He and I have met, but it's kind of a long story." Grinning, Jondy grabbed the phone and began to dial. She managed to get out seven words before the man who answered hung up on her. The second time she managed only three, and the third time no one answered at all.

"Great," she muttered as she hung up the phone. "They think it's a prank call." She cocked her head to the side and thought for a moment. "I don't relish the idea of going into gang territory, but I have to do something." She paused for a moment and glanced over at Max. "So, would you happen to have his address too?"

"134 Clemson." Max said, smiling back at her sister. Jondy leaned over to study the information on Logan's monitor. Something caught her eye.

"I'll be damned." She pointed it out to Max and Logan. She thought for a moment. "Max? Can I borrow your bike and your Jam Pony ID? I've got an idea."

Jondy peddled down the street, carefully watching the people she passed. Off to her left she noticed two little boys playing with marbles on their doorstep, the same children she had seen several days earlier. A thought entered her mind for a moment, but upon further inspection she decided that it wasn't possible. They looked to be six or seven, far too old for her suspicions to be founded. Several blocks farther down a homeless woman dug in a trashcan, her gray hair spilling out from under a well-worn knitted cap. A group of teenaged boys, probably gang members, yelled mockeries across the street at her. She simply ignored them, and they soon tired of the game and let her be. 

For the most part, no one seemed to notice Jondy. The few who did didn't seem to sense anything amiss. To them, she looked like any other Jam Pony messenger. She hoped that Tacoma Bleed would be just as easily deceived. 

Reaching up with one hand, she checked to be sure that her hair was still securely pinned in place and that the short brown wig which covered it was still in position. She'd borrowed Max's hat as well, and she rode with her head down, just in case anyone decided that her face looked a bit too feminine for her to pass as a young male Jam Pony messenger.

The make-up on the back of her neck was itching, and it was driving her crazy, but it was all she had been able to find to cover the barcode on such short notice. Under other circumstances, she might have just had it removed, but she was a little short on time. The stuff was supposedly used to cover scars on burn victims, and she wondered if it was as annoying to them as it was to her.

She rolled her shoulders, trying to reposition the elastic bandage that was wrapped around her chest. She had to admit that it was far more annoying than the make-up. _Why in the world do transgenic super soldiers need breasts, anyway?_ sheasked herself. _You'd think they'd be in the way on the battlefield . . ._ She glanced down to make sure that her baggy clothes weren't getting caught in the bicycle gears. It wasn't her normal style, but she had to cover up the feminine curves somehow.

She reached down and pulled out her ID for another look. Logan had made a copy of Max's for Jondy to use, replacing Max's picture with a picture of Jondy in her disguise. _Thank God for unisex names, _she thought. Logan could have completely faked a name for her, but Jondy wanted the name on the badge to be a real Jam Pony messenger, just in case she was stopped by the Sector Police and they had to check their records. Frowning, Jondy thought of Max's offer to come with her. _ No,_ she had said. _This is something I have to do._

As she neared her destination, she slowed down, using her heightened senses to keep a lookout for anyone who might be watching her or lurking in the shadows. The last thing she needed was for Perez to pop out of some window and start shooting at her, especially since she was riding directly towards his next target. Reaching 134 Clemson, Jondy got off of her bike and removed the letter from her backpack. There was still no sign of anyone watching her, so she slipped up to the door and knocked. After a moment, the door opened a crack, and a brown eye glared out at her.

"Who are you, and what do you want?" a voice growled from the other side of the door.

"Jam Pony messenger. I have a package for Mr. Tacoma Bleed?" The man stared at her for a moment, then shut the door right in her face. _Okay, Jondy, so maybe it wasn't such a bright idea. _She stood outside of the building for a moment, trying to devise another plan. She had to get this message to Bleed, and if he wouldn't accept it now, she would have to leave it for him. Glancing up at the side of the building, she contemplated climbing in a window and leaving it in a conspicuous spot for him to find, but she was sure the gang members in this building were well-armed and that their fingers were just aching to pull the trigger on anyone they saw as a danger to Bleed. It was best to take the easiest route. She leaned over and was about to slip the letter under the door when it opened in front of her. 

"Bring it in here." 

The man who opened the door could have played for the NFL back before the Pulse. He was tall and broad shouldered, and Jondy realized that his brown eyes were the only part of him that wasn't intimidating, although the way he was staring at her was enough to make almost anyone nervous. He stood aside to allow her to enter. 

Stepping inside she realized that this might not have been such a good idea. The room was crawling with gang members, all looking as if one false move on her part and she would end up with more holes than a sponge. She had to get out of here before Bleed opened the package. She held out a paper to the man in the center of the room. "Are you Mr. Bleed?" He nodded cautiously. "Can I get a signature on this?"

Bleed grabbed it away and scrawled his signature, then took the package from her hands. She began to back away, heading for the door. "Jam Pony thanks you for your business. Have a nice--" Unfortunately the man who had answered the door was blocking her exit, and he didn't seem interested in moving.

__

Great. Just great. Jondy watched as Bleed opened the package, her eyes darting around the room in search of the quickest escape route should it become necessary. There was a window about a foot to her right. With her speed she could easily be through it and racing down the street before they knew what happened. Hopefully she wouldn't have to do that. She hated jumping through windows. It brought back too many memories of a fateful night many years before.

Bleed opened the envelope and pulled out a large photo and a hastily scrawled note on a sheet of paper. He looked up at her. "Who sent this?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. It was a pickup from a few blocks down."

Bleed eyed her suspiciously, then began to read the note. She watched as his eyes moved back and forth across the page. Using her photographic memory, she could easily judge how far he was along in the note as he moved across each line and moved down to the next. At the end of the first paragraph, he lowered the note and glanced over at the picture in his other hand. Jondy imagined that it was the first time he had ever heard of Perez, much less seen a picture of the man. He looked up at her again, his eyes filled with suspicion. "_Who_ sent this?"

His meaning was clear. He wanted a name, an address, something more specific. She sighed. Maybe honesty was the only way to make him believe her.

"Actually, _I _did." Before she could take a breath, half of the guns in the room were pointed at her chest. She didn't flinch.

Bleed's eyes narrowed to slits. "What do you want?"

She returned his stare. "You to stay alive."

"Why?"

She resisted the urge to take a step forward. There were too many guns trained on her to make that sort of move. "Because the son of a bitch that's trying to kill you is after me too, because if it weren't for him, I would be happily married, and living in Los Angeles with the man I love and a baby, and because I made a promise to never let him do it again." She lifted her head a notch, refusing to let him believe that he was intimidating her. She wasn't afraid of him, and she wanted to make sure that he knew it.

"Why should it matter to you?"

Jondy looked him over. She knew the risk she was taking, but she had to hit the message home. "His name is Gregory. He is three years old . . . "

Suddenly every gun in the room was aimed at her head. 

" . . . and I think he would like his daddy to be around for his fourth birthday."

Bleed ground his teeth. It was obvious that his finger was itching to pull the trigger of the gun in his hand. "If you touch one hair on his head--"

"I have no intentions of harming your son." She watched as Bleed narrowed his eyes once again, and she didn't miss the slight nod of his head. She wasn't stupid, so when the man behind of her suddenly reached out to grab her from behind, she was more than ready. 

Raising his arms from his sides, he left his ribcage exposed, and Jondy slammed her right elbow directly into his gut. The force behind of her unexpected move caught him off-guard, knocking the air from his lungs for an instant, but an instant was all Jondy needed. As he doubled over she rammed her other elbow into his face, causing blood to spurt from his nose. Jondy ducked, slipping under his arm while simultaneously shoving him in front of her. She placed herself behind of the man, who was now sitting on the floor, an expression of shock and surprise frozen onto his face. She wrapped an arm around his chest from behind and placed the other hand on the opposite jaw, letting her stance show that she was perfectly capable of snapping his neck. The man was so startled that he didn't dare move, and no one dared fire for fear of hitting him. The entire move had taken her less than two seconds.

Jondy moved her eyes across the room, staring each man in the face, proving her point. Confusion and surprise shone from every eye in the room, save her own, and judging from the expressions on their faces, she doubted they even remembered how to use their guns at that moment. Feeling something brushing her neck, she belatedly realized that her secret was out. In ducking under the man's arm, she had dislodged Max's cap and the wig, and a sprig of blonde hair was falling down onto her shoulder. _Great._ The room stayed in silence for a moment. No one knew how to react.

Sighing, Jondy released the man and stood, shoving him forward with her foot. He scrambled across the room to safety. Very slowly she reached up to pin her hair back into place, then leaned over to retrieve the wig and hat, which she placed back on her head. The men in the room were still staring at her, though most had lowered their guns and were watching in astonishment as she fixed her disguise. She glanced over at Bleed, who was starting to recover from his shock.

"Please believe that I have no intention of harming anyone. I came only to warn you. Whether you believe me or not is up to you, but you deserve a warning that others have not received. Keep your eyes open because Perez is still out there, and you're next on his list. When I catch him, he will never harm another person again, my promise to God, but keep yourself safe until then." She paused, then added in a sympathetic voice, "my condolences on your brother's death."

With that, Jondy backed out the door and vanished. The men stared at each other in bewilderment for a moment, then ran towards the door, but by the time they got there, she was already gone.

Bleed pondered the strange event for a moment, not quite sure what to think of this unusual woman who had walked into the midst of a gang dressed as a boy to warn him that someone was trying to kill him, but he had to admit that she had balls, if that was possible for a girl. As for her story, the sharpshooter actually made sense. The four men had been shot with professional precision, something that members of their rival gang were too sloppy to have. 

He pondered the situation for a moment, then leaned down to pick up the note he had dropped when he pulled his gun. He had only read half of it. Scanning down through the rest of the note, he read a familiar name. Something wasn't right. It couldn't be true, and yet . . . when he thought about it . . . strangely, it made sense.

Rattling out a string of curses, Bleed crumpled the paper in his hands, ripping it to shreds at the same time. He would look into this, and if it was true, heads would roll.


	12. Everything Can Change

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve:

. . . Everything Can Change 

Perez scanned the length of the block from his spot behind the broken down van. Something wasn't right. The building across the street, 134 Clemson, was completely silent, too silent, his instincts screamed. No one had gone in or out of the front door all afternoon. There seemed to be no movement within the rickety old building, and no one was visible at its dark windows, no one, that is, except for the badly hidden lookout on the second floor. They knew that something was going on. Perez swore as he stomped out his cigarette on the cracked sidewalk.

To be honest, he was in a bad mood anyway. The address that MacIntyre and Fly had obtained at Jam Pony had turned out to be useless. Though the apartment showed some signs of recent inhabitance, it had been empty when they got there, but no matter what the signs pointed to, Perez just didn't trust that the blonde bitch and her friend were really gone.

He glanced down at his watch. Skull was late, and he didn't like it. Returning his gaze to the building across the street, he again wondered what was going on. Could Tacoma Bleed somehow know that he was waiting outside? He doubted it. Only he and Skull knew the details of their bargain, and he was sure that Skull would not have warned Bleed. The thought was ridiculous, and Skull would not double cross him, of that he was certain. He had nothing to gain from such a move, and everything to gain from their deal, but if Skull didn't show soon, he was going to leave. He wasn't going to complete his end of the bargain until he had the information he'd been looking for.

By the time Skull arrived ten minutes later, Perez was furious. "What the hell took you so long?" he asked angrily.

"I had some things to take care of." Skull shrugged as if he expected the world to wait on him. Perez gritted his teeth.

"Well I don't fire until I have my information." Slowly, deliberately, Skull pulled an envelope out of his pocket. Perez fisted his left hand, trying to keep from reaching out and grabbing it.

"The information we agreed upon, right here in black and white." Skull lifted the corner of his mouth, tapped the envelope against his open palm, and handed it over to Perez, who ripped it open with the eagerness of a child opening a package on Christmas morning. He stared at the words on the page.

"Are you sure this is correct?" he finally asked, folding the paper and throwing the shredded envelope onto the ground. 

"Every word." 

Perez nodded in approval. He slipped the note inside his jacket and placed his hands in his pockets. "Well, Skull, I'd like to say that it's been nice doing business with you . . ." Perez stopped mid-sentence, an evil grin spreading over his features. Skull's confusion registered on his face, but by the time he realized what was happening, it was already too late. A shot rang out, and when Skull's lifeless body hit the pavement, confusion had already been etched into his features forever. Blood seeped out of the wound in his chest, staining his yellow jacket. 

Lamenting the hole he'd caused by firing his gun through his favorite shirt, Perez leaned over to check for a pulse. None. He kicked Skull's dead body and shook his head. "But it hasn't been a pleasure. You're more trouble than you're worth, and far too trusting." Chuckling, he patted the note in his pocket, then turned and walked away without giving the body another glance.

Bleed watched the man as he walked away, then waited ten minutes before he sent men out to investigate. He wondered why Perez hadn't tried to take a shot at him. Was it a trap of some sort? He looked out the window as several of his men reappeared from behind the van and waived him out. Patting the gun in his pocket, he walked out the door and across the street.

As he stepped behind the van, the sight that greeted him knocked the breath from his lungs. Skull's dead body lay on the pavement, a neat, though rather bloody hole in the upper left breast piece of his jacket. _Right through the heart_, he thought. His lookouts had seen Perez sneak behind the van earlier, only to be joined some time later by Skull, which meant that the girl had been telling the truth, and now Skull's dead body was lying here. Suddenly the anger came, swift and irrepressible.

With a shout of rage, Bleed pulled out his gun and fired into Skull's dead body until the clip was empty. Then he turned and walked away, vowing that Perez would be next.

Several old wooden crates were stacked against the far wall of the room, their rotted boards and knotholes rendering them useless. They were covered in spider webs. Frowning, Jondy stared into the inky darkness of the abandoned building. To her eyes, the room was as easily visible as if it were in broad daylight, but that didn't change anything. The warehouse was still empty. She and Max had covered every inch of it twice. 

She watched as several rats climbed out from under the bottom crate and scurried through the shadows across the old wooden floor, their tiny feet making a soft 'pit-pat' as they hurried away. She couldn't imagine what _rats_ would see in a place as dirty and dingy as this. Glancing upward towards the rafters, she could see where numerous sparrows and pigeons had made their homes. Piles of bird droppings lay on the floor beneath the main rafter. _Not my idea of a vacation home_, she thought to herself.

"Well," Max said, her voice breaking the silence of the night, "it doesn't look like anything has been moved in or out of this place since the last time I was here." She ran her gloved finger along a windowsill, then glanced distastefully at the grime she pulled away. She dusted it off with her other hand.

"Well, there goes that theory." Jondy sighed as she and Max began to walk across the room to the ventilation shaft through which they had made their entrance. "We'd just as well go tell Logan that this was a wild goose chase." She frowned, giving the building one last glance. Except for the random trails of rat paw prints, their footprints were the only marks on the dusty floor. No one could possibly have been here.

After climbing up the chute and shimmying down the outside of the building, they began the three block walk to the dumpster behind which Max had hidden her motorcycle. Jondy elbowed her sister. "So, you gonna finish that story anytime soon, baby sister? You kinda left me hangin', you know." Max smiled.

"Where was I? Oh. Well, there was Bronck with Logan and Sung, yelling his head off about Eyes Only. When Bronck threatened to kill Sung, Logan finally gave in and told him the truth. He was just about convinced that Logan really was Eyes Only when Logan's phone rang. Eyes Only was calling Bronck to tell him that he wanted his operatives back." She laughed. "The ass never knew it was me." She flicked a stray piece of hair back over her shoulder. "When I realized that he was trying to trace the call, I played around a little on Logan's computer and sent him to 134 Clemson instead."

Jondy grinned. "So instead of Eyes Only, they found . . . "

"Rydin' Forties." They both laughed.

"Pretty slick, baby sister, pretty slick," Jondy beamed. "Weren't they a little surprised by that though?"

"Well, I called and gave them an anonymous 'head's up.' I figured they should know." 

Jondy shook her head. "I'm impressed."

"Well, I didn't have time to deal with them. I had more important things to do." Max smiled lightly. "I taped the call to Bronck and played it through a few times. I could hear airplanes in the background and a foghorn off in the distance, so I figured out they were out at Warton Airfield." They turned down the alley towards Max's motorcycle. "I went out and kicked some ass and got Logan back. I even managed to keep a planeload of girls he'd kidnapped from getting sent overseas."

Jondy sighed, remembering once again that Max had done what she and Brian had failed to do. She was about to respond with that thought when footsteps sounded in the distance. Though they were still far off, the two sisters heard them easily and ducked into the shadows with Max's motorcycle. Not knowing who might be coming, it was wise to remain as invisible as possible. 

Peaking out from behind the dumpster, they saw two men walking towards their hiding place. They were still about fifty feet down the alley, and they tread lightly, as if they, too, were hiding from something or someone. As Jondy peered out through the darkness, she could clearly see the various scars and tattoos which covered their bare arms. _Blunt Ryddim Kidz_, she thought. _It is their territory_. Silently the men snuck down the alley and ducked into the shadows around the corner.

When they were out of sight, Max and Jondy emerged from their hiding place. Max shook her head. "What are Rydin' Forties doing over here?" she asked.

"Rydin' Forties?" Jondy wrinkled her brow. "How do you know they were Rydin' Forties?"

Max shrugged. "Simple. Did you see that swirly tattoo they both had?" Jondy thought back for a moment, her photographic memory pulling every detail of the tattoo up before her eyes as clearly as if she were looking at it now. Something clicked. She frowned.

"That's a Rydin' Forties thing?"

"Yeah, I don't think they all have that particular tattoo, but a lot of them do. It's the gang's insignia or something like that." She shrugged, clearly not worried about it either way, and walked behind the dumpster to retrieve her motorcycle.

Jondy gave her sister a bewildered look. "I've seen it before." Back in the shadows, her sister cocked her head to the side. "It was on the arm of the gang member that was dealing with Perez."

Max, who had been wheeling her bike out, stopped in her tracks. "He had that tattoo?"

"Yup. So I guess this whole thing's been a wild goose chase." Jondy shook her head. "Rydin' Forties bumping each other off, who'd have guessed?"

Max shook her head. "It's always about power. And money. Get rid of the guy ahead of you and move up the food chain." She began to push her bike out from behind the dumpster again.

Jondy wrinkled her brow. "Well that only leaves one question. What kind of information would Perez want from the Rydin' Forties?" As Max shook her head, she saw a light dawn in her sister's eyes. Jondy took a deep breath. "Max, do you think Bronck's men might have said they were looking for Eyes Only when they showed up at Bleed's?"

Max shrugged again. "Probably, but I doubt they lived to share that news with too many people." She watched as Jondy's brow wrinkled tighter. "What is it?"

"Do you think Bleed could have traced the call you made to warn him?" Again Max shook her head.

"I wasn't on the phone long enough. There's no way they could have gotten an address, even if they were tracing it when I called."

"What about pulling the number out of the phone's memory and then using it to track down the address later . . . " Jondy trailed off as she watched the blood drain out of Max's face. 

"Oh shit," Max said as she practically flew into the seat of her motorcycle. Jondy barely had time to jump on the bike behind her sister before Max went tearing off through the streets of Seattle, weaving through traffic at an insane speed. 

Neither of them were worried about the speed or the possibility of being stopped by the Sector Police. Suddenly the truth had become sickeningly clear. They both knew exactly what information Perez had been after.

The identity of Eyes Only.


	13. Return to the Scene of the Crime

Chapter Thirteen:

Return to the Scene of the Crime

"Oh shit." Max paused for only a moment at the doorway of Logan's apartment. The door stood ajar. Taking a deep breath and trying to still the racing of her heart, she supressed the urge to run in through the open door and quietly entered, creeping silently from room to room to be sure that there was no danger waiting within. She bit her lip to keep from calling out his name.

Jondy remained at the open door. There was no sign of forced entry, she noted, studying the door lock and the undamaged doorjamb, so either Logan had opened the door for them or they had picked the lock and snuck up on him. Leaning forward to peak in through the doorway of the apartment, she saw nothing out of place. The furniture sat straight and neat in the middle of the floor. Paintings hung evenly on the walls. Apparently there hadn't been any sort of struggle. Glancing down at an expensive looking urn, she frowned. _Max was on the right track when she broke into this place,_ the thought. _It's any burglar's dream._ Unfortunately, the people who had stopped by tonight had been looking for something more valuable than art. She shook her head, glancing about the hallway for some clue as to how long it had been since Perez had been here, but she found nothing, only blank walls staring back at her. 

Within the apartment, she heard Max ask, "Logan?" Her voice was unsure, almost a whisper. If she was speaking, then she had already swept through the apartment and determined it to be safe. Of course that also meant that she had discovered that Logan was not there. Jondy frowned, listening to her sister repeat his name.

Jondy already knew that Logan was gone. Perez could have broken in and killed him, but it wasn't his style. Eyes Only was the biggest fish in the pond, and Perez wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to play with him a bit before reeling him in for the catch. 

As she walked through the apartment towards the source of her sister's voice, she kept an eye out for clues, but she found nothing out of the ordinary. She did, however, find Max standing in Logan's office. His computer was still turned on, and the desk chair lay on its side on the floor. Max's expression was difficult to describe, a cross between fear and disbelief, and she seemed to be numb. Jondy leaned over to touch the seat of the chair. "It's still warm," she said aloud. "It hasn't been very long since he was here."

At the sound of Jondy's voice, Max blinked out of her stare, but the worry shone in her eyes. "Where would they have taken him?" she asked aloud, though it seemed to Jondy as if she was speaking to herself. Max thought of her previous experience with finding Logan. She'd called his cell phone that time, but as she glanced down at his desk, his phone lay in clear view on top of a stack of folders. That option was out. Jondy shook her head.

"I don't know." She watched Max's expression for a moment, then grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the door.

"Where are we going?" Max asked. She didn't resist her sister's insistent tug.

"Back to the apartment where I saw Perez the other night. I've swung by every night since then to see if he might be there again, but he's too cautious for that. He'd never meet in the same place twice." She closed and locked the apartment door behind of them. "That urn is so ugly. It has to be expensive. I don't think he'll be too happy if he comes back and sees that someone waltzed in his open door and took it while he was gone." She gave Max a small smile, trying to lighten the mood. "Come on, baby sister," she said as Max followed her back down to the ground floor. "Let's go look for clues."

__

If there are any clues here, they'll be pretty easy to spot, Max thought as she glanced about the empty apartment. There wasn't a single rug on the worn hardwood floor, and the furnishings of the apartment consisted of only a desk and two chairs, one of which was broken. All three pieces of furniture sat in the main room where she now stood. They'd turned up nothing in the other rooms, so this was their last hope, but it seemed pretty hopeless. Or was that just her mood? She wasn't really ready to give up. She just had a terrible feeling.

She heard Jondy shuffling around in the back bedroom just moments before her sister emerged into the hallway. She held out her hands for Max to inspect. Empty. Max looked down towards the floor. There had to be something here. There just had to be . . . 

Max sighed and took a final glance around the room, but all she could see was bare floor. Suddenly a flash of white caught her eye. A small piece of something seemed to be curled against the leg of the desk, and Max leaned over to pick it up. She groaned as she realized what it was. "What's the matter?" Jondy asked from across the room. Max held up an empty pack of matches for her sister's inspection. Jondy walked towards her and took it from her hand.

"Perez smokes," she said, turning it over in her palm. "He must have left it here." She read the advertisement on the front. "Yum Yum Tree Motel? Well, _that_ sounds pretty high class," Jondy remarked sarcastically. 

Max rolled her eyes. "Trust me, it's nowhere near . . ."

Jondy cocked her head to the side. "You're kidding me . . ." She held up her hands, the empty package still pinched between two fingers of her right hand. "Don't worry. I don't want to know what you were doing there or who you were with."

"That's good." Max shook her head as they headed for the door. The memory of dragging a drunken Lydecker out the back window of a motel room rose to mind. "You wouldn't believe me anyway."

Max and Jondy looked out from behind a parked car at the lighted windows of the rooms in front of them. The clerk hadn't been very helpful, even after they'd slipped him some money. Maybe this was hopeless, Jondy thought for a moment. _No_, she chastised herself. _Don't you dare think like that._

She sighed, trying to peek inside the windows. She felt like a Peeping Tom, and she was sure that there were things happening in those rooms that she really _didn't_ want to see, but she had to know. If any of Perez's men had some connection to this motel, it may be their only chance to find Logan. She sighed as she watched an old man and a scantily clad bottle blonde disappear into Number 18. They weren't what she was looking for. She moved her attention to the next room, but it didn't seem to be occupied. A moment later, a door opened a little farther down the row, catching Jondy's attention as light spilled out onto the pavement before the switch was flipped off and the light was extinguished. She grinned. _Bingo._

"Bender," she whispered to Max. Her sister followed Jondy's gaze to a man locking the door of a darkened room. 

"Great," she muttered. "It just had to be Number 12." As they crept deeper into the shadows, Jondy shook her head. _Number 12?_ They watched as Bender got into a beat-up van and drove away. And then they followed.

Logan awoke slowly, blinking in confusion at the unfamiliar walls around him. They were covered in faded wallpaper, some sort of a striped floral print, though he couldn't tell for certain in the darkness of the room. He angled his head upward and glanced out the room's only window at the stars outside. 

His last memory was of staring at his computer screen. Outwardly he'd been looking up information on some of Perez's associates, but his mind had been elsewhere, trying to plan a talk that he knew he had to have with Asha when she returned. But all he'd been able to think of were all the things he wished he could say to Max. There had been a sound, a quiet shuffling, and he had turned, expecting to see Max or Jondy, but he didn't remember seeing anything at all, only a blinding pain in his temple as everything went black. That was all that he remembered.

His head hurt, and he imagined that he was going to have a nasty bruise. He must have been out for a while because his shoulder hurt from the uncomfortable angle at which he'd been lying. He tried to move his arm, but found that his hands were tied behind his back, and he glanced down to find that his feet were tied at the ankles. He moved his leg experimentally. At least the exoskeleton was still in place. 

The next thought to cross his mind was to wonder what he was doing here. Lying on the floor tied up, that much was obvious, but who had brought him here? And where was 'here?' How had they known to come after him? After a moment of struggling he managed to wiggle across the floor to a wall and sit up against it, no easy feat considering the way he was tied.

Footsteps approached from the distance, and a door opened, causing light to flood the room. Logan closed his eyes against it. Two sets of footsteps continued forward, one stopping several yards away from him, while the other continued before stopping just in front of his feet. He opened his eyes and squinted upward into Perez's face. A grin crossed the man's lips, but he was silent for a moment.

"So," he finally spoke, "this is our good friend Eyes Only." It was a statement, not a question. He flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette. 

Logan took a deep breath. "I don't know what you're talking about." _Okay, so it was a really bad bluff_, he thought.

Perez leaned forward, chuckling softly. He turned his head to the side and spoke to his companion. "He says he doesn't know what I'm talking about, MacIntyre." The other man raised an eyebrow as Perez returned his attention to Logan. "You don't know what I'm talking about?" he asked calmly, batting his eyes. A moment of silence. "Bullshit!" The last word was yelled with such force that it made Logan squint. Perez leaned forward farther, his face now only inches away from Logan's. "Don't lie to me. I'm not in the mood." He stood up again and paced across the room.

Logan's eyes were adjusting to the light. He glanced over at the man Perez had called MacIntyre. He was very large, and so was the gun he carried. He patted the barrell and grinned wickedly at Logan. 

Perez paced back across the room, blocking MacIntyre from view once more. "How would you like to make a deal?" Perez asked. He grinned in satisfaction at the confused expression which appeared on Logan's face and resumed his pacing. "Gerhardt Bronck." He paused to let the name sink in and took a puff from the cigarette in his hand. "An old friend of mine. A business colleague too, you might say. Too bad he's dead." He narrowed his eyes and shrugged. "Actually, dying was rather convenient of him. It saved me having to kill him." He shook his head and lifted the cigarette to his lips again. "The man had no business sense. He used to send me those bitches he swiped off the street. Do you know I had a guy in Beijing who would pay as much for one redheaded virgin as Bronck could get for half a damned plane full of girls?" He chuckled. "Of course I had to replace the ones I sold to him, but that wasn't a problem. There's no shortage of serviceable girls in LA, let me tell you." He chuckled at the memory, then sobered.

"See, I have a problem. Bronck died before I could take everything over, and that's what I'm here to do now. Take everything over." Another puff on the cigarette. "Unfortunately, I don't have it all sorted out just yet. Oh, I've got some names, some connections, but not enough to start up where he left off." He halted his pacing in front of Logan and leaned forward slightly. "That's where you come in. You're going to help me. You're going to give me all of that information."

Logan returned his glare. "What makes you think I would do that?" Perez shrugged.

"Because I have an offer that you can't refuse." The evil grin touched his features again. "A quick and relatively painless death." He straightened and paced away, returning MacIntyre to Logan's line of vision. The man now had a rather long and ugly looking knife in his hands. He held it up, letting the light gleam off the blade. "You know what?" Perez began again, gesturing towards his companion. "MacIntyre here used to work in a butcher shop. He really loves to carve things up. I think he misses it sometimes." He chuckled. "So, can I expect your assistance in this matter?"

Logan narrowed his gaze. "Don't count on it." 

Perez dropped the cigarette to the floor and stomped it out. He paused to stare at Logan for a moment. "Don't count on it, eh?" He motioned to MacIntyre and turned towards the door. "Well, it's a big decision, so I'll just let you think about it for a little while." He exited the room, MacIntyre following closely behind. About three feet from the door, MacIntyre suddenly turned, lunging across the room. Logan froze at the sight of the knife blade as it descended towards his head. Instinctively, he closed his eyes, but all he heard was a 'thud' as the knife was embedded in the wall just inches above his head. MacIntyre chuckled, then removed the blade, his laughter echoing off the walls as he walked back across the room and slammed the door behind him, leaving Logan in darkness once again.

Logan waited for his heart to resume beating before releasing the breath he'd been holding in. Then and there he decided that every knife in his kitchen had to go. He glanced towards the window and wondered if he had a chance. Max had come to his rescue more times than he could count, but right now it felt pretty damned hopeless. 

__

Strange, he thought as he bent his knees in front of him and leaned his head back against the wall. Here he was in Perez's clutches, wishing desperately that Max would come flying in that window, but it didn't have a thing to do with saving him. He just wanted to see her again. Maybe, just maybe, if he was going to die here tonight, God would be merciful and let him touch her again, let him hold her in his arms, let him kiss her once if he was going to die anyway, but he shook his head. He didn't want Max anywhere near this. He could hear voices down the hallway, and he knew that a gun belonged to each one of them. However much he wanted to get away from all this, he didn't want Max around where she might get hurt. Perez was determined to kill Jondy, and if he'd connected her to Max, he was already looking for them both. They'd be safer if they got as far away as possible.

Outside the window, two sets of eyes watched, and two sets of ears listened distinctly to the noises within the walls of the old apartment building. Like a moth to a flame, Bender had led them exactly where they wanted to go.

Jondy chuckled to herself. She had to give Perez credit, meeting at the address where Reggie had sent them in search of her. It was the last place she would ever have thought to look, and she was sure that Perez was there waiting, just in case she returned. Well, she had returned, and he was in for the surprise of his life. She smiled grimly. She would end this now, or she would die trying.

Turning, she made a series of hand gestures towards Max, who thought a moment and offered some gestures of her own. After a moment they both nodded in agreement, the plan having been made. They slithered off into the shadows, neither one aware that they were being watched.


	14. X5210

Chapter Fourteen:

  


X5-210

  
  


Listening to the sound of rap music blaring out of a passing car radio, Bender shifted the gun in his hands as he kept watch out of an eighth story window. There was no sign of the blonde that his boss seemed to be so worried about, either alone or with another woman, and to tell the truth, he was feeling pretty relieved. Though he'd never admit it out loud, he really didn't want to meet up with her again. As he watched the wind blow an old newspaper along the street below, he decided that they were long gone by now. Their apartment had been in this building, hadn't it? Someone behind him cleared their throat, and he turned to see a young dark-haired woman dressed in black. She cocked her head to the side. 

"Excuse me, this is like _really_ embarrassing," she began, twirling her hair around her fingers, "but all the doors in this building look exactly the same. Can you, like, tell me where the bathroom is?" Confusion barely had time to register before Jondy swung in through the window from the fire escape above. She grabbed his head and rammed it against the wall with a 'thud." He dropped. 

_Poor guy,_ Jondy thought to herself as she watched Max remove the clip from his gun. _He always seems to get knocked off his feet whenever I'm around._ She glanced back out the window. No one on the ground below seemed to have seen them. Good. 

Silently, they left the room and crept through the shadowy hallway. There were too many guns in this place, Jondy lamented. If there were more than just the two of them, or if they had been carrying weapons of their own, the odds might be a bit more in their favor, but Max refused to carry a gun, and though Jondy wasn't entirely opposed to them, she didn't really like them that much either. She'd carried one on a few occasions since the escape, but not anytime within the last five years or so. They brought back too many memories that she wanted to forget. 

Thankfully, most of the firepower seemed to be stationed outside to monitor who came into the building. Since they were already inside, they wouldn't have to worry about that, at least not until the time came to get back out. She sighed. They had to sneak into the room where Logan was being kept, untie him, and get him back out without being caught, not an easy task considering that she was the only one who could touch him. Not to mention the fact that getting out would probably involve scaling the side of a building and leaping across an alley from the top of one building and onto the roof of another. She shook her head. _First things first. Get him untied. Then worry about getting him out._   
  
  


In an apartment farther down the hall, Perez had decided that Eyes Only had had enough time to think about his offer. With Fly and MacIntyre on his heels, he entered the dark room, an unlit cigarette clenched between his lips. The man sat on the floor in the same spot he had been in earlier, though he had shifted positions somewhat. He glared down at the man for a moment, wondering again about the contraption on his legs. He and MacIntyre had inspected it closely, but decided that it couldn't be used as a weapon. It seemed to be some sort of a brace. 

"So," he asked conversationally, "been thinking about our little deal?"   
  
  


Jondy and Max slithered around a corner and approached the door of the apartment where Logan was being held. Max easily dispatched the guard at the door with a well-placed elbow, and they snuck into the dark interior of the old apartment. The man stationed in the apartment's kitchen caught a glimpse of them, but was unable to fire a shot before he was silenced in a similar manner. On the street below gunfire suddenly erupted. Max and Jondy glanced at each other before diving into the shadows. Whatever was happening downstairs would be heard, and someone would be coming to inspect any second now.   
  
  


"I'm not making any deals," Logan said through clinched teeth. Death or no death, he was not going to help this worthless . . . 

The silence was pierced by the sound of gunfire on the street below. 

"What the hell is that?" Perez roared. He turned to MacIntyre. "Get the hell out there, and see what's going on!" MacIntyre went running out through the door, while Fly moved to stand guard just outside of it. Perez turned back to Logan. "I hope you don't have any friends with some stupid idea of coming to your rescue," he sneered. He had no way of knowing that as Logan lay there listening to the roar of gunfire outside the window, he was praying for the exact same thing.   
  
  


MacIntyre crept out into the kitchen of the apartment. Standing in the doorway, he searched the room for signs of movement. Seeing Henry's feet sticking out from behind the counter, he swore beneath his breath. He scanned the room again, and seeing a figure in the shadows, he began to sneak up on it. 

As a general rule of fighting, it is never wise to put someone who is shorter than you in a headlock from behind. Jondy learned that lesson during a training session at Manticore at the age of six, when she had tried that exact move on Brin. Her sister had merely leaned forward, flipping her over her shoulders, and sending her flying against the far wall of the training room. Zack had learned it from Jondy several weeks later, when he made that same mistake and ended up against the same wall. Unfortunately, no one had ever taught MacIntyre this lesson, and so the moment his arm closed around Jondy from behind, his fate was sealed. Throwing her weight forward, she pitched him over her shoulders and through the living room window. There was the sound of shattering glass, followed several seconds later by the sound of MacIntyre's body hitting the pavement eight stories below. Jondy peeked out around the jagged edges of the broken window. A pool of blood was already forming around his head. She shuddered at the sight and turned away. Manticore training or no Manticore training, she still hated killing people. 

Max and Jondy crept back through the hallway, sliding against the walls and staying as silent as possible. Spotting Fly at the door, they shared a look. No hand signals or words were needed this time. They knew what to do. 

Jondy made the first move, jumping out at Fly and spinning him into the doorway of the room. Reacting on pure instinct, Perez drew his gun and fired, hitting Fly in the chest as Jondy dodged out of the path of the bullet. Fly was dead before he hit the ground. Speeding into the room, Max kicked the gun from Perez's grasp, sending it flying off into the air before he could get off another shot. Reaching out, Jondy caught it neatly in her hand. It seemed to Perez as though Max had sent it in her direction on purpose, which she had. Calmly Jondy walked over to untie Logan. Perez wasn't sure what to do. The woman in front of him was small, but she was strong and quick, and he didn't have another weapon on him. After a moment of thought, he tried to move forward, but he received a sharp kick in the stomach and thought better of it. He tried to back away but found his escape blocked by the only window in the room, and there were eight floors between him and the ground below. Jondy lay the gun on the floor and began to untie Logan's wrists. 

"What do you think you're doing here?" he asked Max, who was still crouched in a fighting position, keeping both eyes trained on Perez. It took all of her self-control not to turn to look at Logan, to check him for injuries, to assure herself that he was really okay, but once her eyes fell on him, she knew she wouldn't be able to turn away, and her attention needed to remain on Perez right now. 

"Saving your sorry ass," she replied without shifting her gaze. "You're welcome. Don't I get a thank you?" Though her words were sharp, Jondy could hear the catch in Max's voice. _She's scared witless at the thought of losing him,_ she thought. Logan rubbed at his wrists. 

"What were you thinking? You could have been-" 

"Sorry, but my sister's a little busy right now," Jondy interrupted. "You two can do the cute little reunion thing later, okay? Now hold still." She smacked him on the leg as she finished with the ties on his ankles. She knew he couldn't feel it, but she felt like she needed to make a point. Perez glanced from the blonde bitch to her sister and then back again. He was suddenly very furious. All of his plans ruined because she hadn't just died when she was supposed to. One more bullet could have prevented all of this. "What are you?" he asked her. "Something from hell?" 

For the first time since entering the room, she focused her attention on Perez. Cold hatred seeped from her eyes, and everyone in the room saw it. She thought briefly of Manticore. "You might say that I was born and bred there." She narrowed her eyes to slits. Her hand crept along the floor to mold around the handle of the gun she had laid beside her. 

"You should have just stayed there. Better yet, you should have just died in LA with that worthless, nosey, son of a bitch that you were following around." He grinned evilly. "You were just his little whore, anyway, and that's all you'll ever be." 

Jondy didn't realize the gun in her hand was raised until she saw the startled expression on Max's face, but that didn't stop her. Suddenly all she could remember was sitting with Brian as they watched the sunrise, kissing him on the pier after they'd dragged themselves out of the Pacific . . . and every moment of that night that followed after. Lying in his arms and thinking, well, not really thinking anything beyond the fact that he was very nice to share a pillow with. She remembered the sadness in Brian's beautiful eyes when he pleaded with her not to leave that morning, and the joy in their depths as their eyes had met in the marketplace. She remembered standing in Zane's bathroom laughing as she stared at the little plastic stick in her hand, the pastel symbol at it's tip changing her life forever. And then, from the depths of her memory came the most painful thought of all, the memory of holding his dead body in her arms as his blood soaked through her clothes, mixing with her own, though she hadn't realized it at the time. Mumbling over and over how much she loved him before everything had gone black. And she remembered awakening in Zane's apartment and wondering why she couldn't have just died too. 

Here, thought Jondy, was Brian's killer, the man who had ruined her life, the monster who had taken it all away from her. Briefly, she imagined pulling the trigger, imagined the bullet entering his forehead and shattering the window on the other side. In her mind's eye she saw bits of blood and brain covering the windowsill. Or maybe a better shot would be through his eyes, those eyes that haunted her nightmares as she gazed up at him from the street, Brian's lifeless body in her arms. Two quick shots and they would both be gone, those horrible ugly orbs. She wondered how much blood would be splattered on the walls with two shots? How big would the holes be then? Would any of his cursed face be left? Would that horrible grin still be there every time she closed her eyes? 

Another memory came then, a memory from farther into her past. Running through the woods, the feel of tree branches slapping her face as she ran blindly after the man, a predator after her prey. The man's screams echoing in her ears, the taste of his blood in her mouth as she and her brothers and sisters wrenched his life away. That image haunted her nightmares, too, much as it ran through her mind now. Only this time it wasn't the convict's face she saw. It was Perez's. 

From his place in the corner, Logan shivered suddenly at the look in Jondy's eyes. He felt his blood freeze at the coldness in their depths as, for the first time in his life, Logan found himself face to face with a cold-blooded killer. This, he realized, was not the young woman he had met several days earlier. This was X5-210, the killer she had left behind on a cold winter night as she climbed a perimeter fence in Wyoming and started her own life on the other side. 

Max stood frozen, watching the look in her sister's blue eyes. She felt the breath catch in her throat, but she couldn't move. She knew what Jondy was thinking, just as she knew that if Jondy pulled the trigger, there would be no going back. It was a truth that Max lived with every day. Like Jondy, she had been born to kill, her genes spliced and replicated to perfection for that one purpose. They had been taught from the time they left the nursery how to do it, how to kill, quickly, efficiently, happily, and without a second thought. It was a part of her life that Max had left behind long ago, but Jondy was about to cross a dangerous line . . . and as Max stood watching in horror, she couldn't seem to make a single move to stop her. 

But Jondy was unaware of their reactions. Images flashed through her mind, things that might have been but never were. Coming home to find Brian alive and well and confessing her love to him, as well as her mistake in leaving. The feel of his hand on her stomach as he felt their baby's first kicks. Lying in bed with her newborn in her arms and Brian's lips on hers. Taking their baby out to see her first sunrise. Her baby's first birthday . . . and every one after. A lifetime full of awakening every morning in Brian's arms . . . 

The vision of Perez's blood staining the windowsill flashed through her mind once more, and gritting her teeth and setting her jaw, she raised the gun, took aim, and pulled the trigger. 


	15. Bleed

Chapter Fifteen:

  


Bleed

  
  


The bullet drove into the windowsill, splintering the rotting wood upon impact. Perez, who had been expecting his own demise, flinched at the gun's discharge, but quickly regained his composure as he tried to mask his fear. It took him several seconds to do so successfully, though his knees still trembled. He had no intention of showing the blonde bitch in front of him that he was afraid, afraid of her and of what she could do to him. 

In the deafening silence of the night, Max's sigh of relief almost echoed as she let out a breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding. She watched Jondy's figure, frozen as if a statue, gun still pointed directly at Perez's head. Though she wouldn't mind seeing the man dead, she didn't want to think what the act might do to her sister. She took a tentative step forward. "Jondy?" but her sister didn't seem to hear her. 

Several more seconds of silence passed. Across the room, Logan's shock became confusion. He blinked several times to clear his head. Though Max had been guarded with many of the details of her training at Manticore, he had seen what X5's were capable of. Jondy had spent her childhood being trained to kill, that much he knew, and there was no way that she could have missed, even if she hadn't been at such close range. 

But Jondy was oblivious to the reactions of her two companions. She held the gun at ready, though she did not intend to fire again. _The man who killed Brian . . . The man who killed Brian . . ._ The phrase ran through her head over and over again. She shook her head slightly, trying to dislodge the thought. It didn't work. _The man who killed Brian . . . The man who . . ._ She stared down at the gun she still held trained on Perez and shuddered inwardly. 

"You aren't worth the price of a bullet," she finally told him. Trying to steady her trembling hands, she lowered the gun and removed the remaining ammunition. _The man who killed . . . _

As she tossed the gun aside, a fresh round of gunfire began on the street below. Perez glanced at the dark-haired woman and Eyes Only. Had they brought reinforcements? No, they seemed to be just as bewildered as he was. He glanced back at the blonde bitch as a round of shots was suddenly heard in the hallway outside. He watched both women snap into a fighting stance as he backed up against the windowpane. Beyond the bedroom door, he recognized the shots and yells of his own men in reply, but he soon realized that they were shouts of pain, and the returned fire of his own men seemed to diminish within seconds. It was as if he could hear them dying. 

Jondy glanced towards Perez, sharing in his confusion. She had no way of knowing that at that very moment, they shared the exact same thought: _What the hell is going on, anyway?_ She listened to the sounds of gunfire in the hallway outside the apartment. There were at least a dozen shooters attacking Perez's men, and from the sound of it, Perez's men were losing severely. _Who else could be trying to get into this building?_ she wondered. _What enemies does Perez have that are just as eager to take the son of a bitch out as I am? And how many lives has this man ruined anyway . . ._ She turned her gaze towards Logan, wondering if Eyes Only had some sort of army of bodyguards tracking him down and on the way to his rescue, but if they'd had a chance at backup, Max would have called them in the first place. 

A movement in a window across the street caught her eye, and suddenly Jondy understood what was happening. The gunfire made sense now. Everything made sense. Spinning towards her sister she made a single sharp hand signal. It didn't need to be repeated, for although nearly twelve years had passed since last she had seen it, Max understood immediately. 

_Duck!_

Max hurled herself towards the floor as Jondy dived towards Logan, knocking him flat against the ground onto his stomach. "What . . . " she heard him exclaim right before the breath whooshed out of his lungs at the force of the impact, and he gasped to replace the lost oxygen. At that moment, Perez made the greatest, and final, mistake of his life. He turned to look out the window at his back instead of diving to the floor. His last vision was of Tacoma Bleed's determined expression in a window across the street as he lifted his gun and pulled the trigger. Gunshots echoed in the room, and Perez crumpled to the floor in a pool of blood. 

And suddenly the room returned to the deathly silence of moments earlier. Rolling away from Logan and pushing herself up onto her elbows, Jondy glanced at Perez's dead body. There was a strange sense of peace, of finality, to the sight of Perez in death, even though it made her stomach flip. She'd almost caused that herself. It made her queasy to think of the deed she had almost done. _Wouldn't Manticore have been proud . . . _

The gunfire on the street below had stopped, and there was only the sound of heavy feet advancing down the hallway. Jondy could hear them just outside of the door. She shared a look with her sister as they rose to stand in front of Logan, but when Max assumed a fighting stance, Jondy shook her head. Max gave her sister a bewildered look, but relaxed. Jondy seemed to know what was going on, so Max would trust her judgement. 

Cautiously, a gun barrel peaked around the corner, followed slowly by its owner. Jondy recognized the man instantly. He was the one who had answered the door at Bleed's, the one she had used to make her point. At the sight of her, he narrowed his brown eyes, but he made no threatening move in her direction, only stood there staring at her, gun drawn, as if not quite certain what he should do. Several more gang members appeared in the doorway behind of him, their weapons drawn in a similar fashion. After a moment, he turned his gaze to Perez. Lowering his gun, he walked across the room to inspect the dead body for a moment, then he leaned out the window and made a hand gesture to someone on the street below. He turned to consider Jondy for a moment, then nodded to the men in the doorway, who stepped back to allow her and her companions to exit the room. After turning to help Logan up off the floor, she did as bid, Logan and Max following closely behind. 

They made up a strange group as they walked down the hallway and several flights of stairs, flanked on all sides by Rydin' Forties. They all looked away, trying not to focus on the bloodied bodies that dotted the floor here and there. The men seemed at ease. No weapons were drawn, and Logan couldn't help but feel as if they were being guarded, not to protect the other people in the building, but for their own protection. In the hallway just inside the main doors on the ground floor, they met Bleed, who appeared to have been waiting for them. Stopping ten feet apart, he and Jondy measured each other for a moment in silence. Finally he spoke. 

"I owe you," he said. "For the head's up." 

Jondy shook her head. "You killed that bastard for me. Your debt is paid." Bleed paused to study her for another moment, then he nodded and took a step back, allowing Jondy to leave. 

Logan watched the exchange in bewilderment. They had made a deal with a street gang. Jondy had warned Bleed, and Bleed had killed Perez, so they had an understanding. They were free to go with no interference. Maybe there was honor among thieves, he mused as Jondy motioned them to follow her out the door. 

"So, baby sister has friends in the Rydin' Forties," Max chuckled as they exited the building. 

"Oh, I wouldn't say that. More like an arrangement was reached." She grinned to herself. "We understand each other." She thought briefly of little Gregory, who was probably snuggled up in bed somewhere, never dreaming of what his father was up to tonight. 

Logan glanced back at the building as they walked away. Though he had witnessed it all, he still wasn't sure if he believed it or not. Eyes Only had just been saved by two transgenic women and a street gang. It was definitely one of the strangest experiences of his life. He glanced over at Max to find that her eyes were focused on him. At any other moment, one of them would have looked away, but somehow neither could. 

Suddenly, he felt himself falling forward, but Jondy grabbed him from behind and righted him before he went face first onto the concrete. Belatedly he realized that he'd been paying more attention to Max than to where he was walking. The exoskeleton may help him walk, but it couldn't let him feel when he'd tripped over a brick. "You two can make googley eyes at each other later, okay?" Jondy teased. Underneath, she couldn't quite admit that she was a little jealous. She and Brian had gotten away from Perez once, but the second time they hadn't been so lucky. This time, she knew that Perez was dead. There wouldn't be a "second time" for Max and Logan. If only there hadn't been for her. 

Glancing back at Max sheepishly, Logan realized that she had averted her gaze to the shadows in the distance. He felt like a fool. 

Jondy spoke up. "So, how exactly are we going to get home, anyway?" Max turned to her sister. "Three people, one motorcycle, and the two of you can't ride together." Max frowned. 

"Well, I guess we could take turns. You take Logan home and then come back for me." She glanced over at her motorcycle sadly. Whether Jondy was her sister or not, her bike was still her baby. 

"Go home?" Logan asked. "The one I was just kidnapped from?" 

"Well, anybody that knows about that is dead now. I'm sure it's pretty safe." Jondy shrugged, but Logan still looked ill at ease. "Okay, how about this. I take you to Max's and drop you off with Cindy. Then I'll come back for Max, and we'll check your place out. If everything looks okay, I'll come and pick you up." He thought it over for a moment. 

"Okay, sounds good to me." Jondy was already pulling Max's motorcycle out of the shadows. As he got on behind her, he glanced back towards Max, expecting to see her looking on mournfully as her motorcycle left without her. He began to chuckle at the thought, but the look in Max's eyes caught him as Jondy began to pull away. She was watching _him,_ not her motorcycle.   
  
  


Original Cindy was wearing her pajamas when she answered the knock at her door. Jondy frowned. She hadn't realized how late it was. "I'm sorry. I woke you." 

"No, no. It's aiight, boo. What can I do for you?" she mumbled through a yawn. Hearing Jondy's voice, Milly appeared from behind the counter. 

"Actually, there's been a . . . complication. Can Logan stay here for a few hours while Max and I . . . take care of something?" Original Cindy narrowed her eyes. More Eyes Only problems, she imagined, though she was sworn to secrecy on that count. She tried to sound confused. 

"Okay . . . so, what happened anyway? Gas leak?" She stepped back so Logan could enter and watched as he shrugged. 

"Something like that." As Logan entered the apartment, Milly stepped into the center of the room and glared at Jondy. 

"Oh, don't even try to give me that look, mouse-breath. I've been busy kicking bad guy ass, which is more than you've done lately." The cat flicked her tail and stared at her owner for a moment. 

"Fuzzball there's got problems," Original Cindy said. "Original Cindy was trying to give herself a manicure, and every time she pick out a color, Miss Milly over there would push her nose up at it." Jondy grinned. "Kept doing it until I picked one she liked." Jondy chuckled. At the sound of her owner's laughter, the cat finally gave in and crossed the room daintily to allow Jondy to pet her. She scratched her behind her little feline ears. 

"Well," she said after a moment. "I've got to go pick up Max. We'll be back in a little while." At that, Milly twitched her tail and stalked off, annoyed that Jondy was leaving again. "Imp!" Jondy called after her with a chuckle. She nodded towards Logan and Original Cindy and left. 

"Well, Original Cindy don't entertain too many of the mens after hours." She headed towards the kitchen. "Want somethin' to eat?" Logan realized that his stomach was growling. He'd been otherwise occupied all night, and hadn't even thought of eating. 

"Sure. Sounds good to me." He watched as Original Cindy stooped over to slip Milly a piece of cheese and chuckled to himself. The cat was definitely a piece of work.   
  
  


When Jondy returned for Logan several hours later, the stars were still shining overhead. She spoke very little on the trip back to his apartment, and he thought that she seemed rather preoccupied. She dropped him off at the door and left Max's motorcycle in its usual parking spot. 

"Max is already upstairs waiting, and everything checked out. I don't think you're going to have to worry about any unwanted visitors." Logan nodded. 

"Thanks for . . . well, everything tonight." 

She stuck her hands in her pockets and offered him a weak smile. "No problem, I do what I can." She paused. "You saved me once, too, remember?" She looked off in the opposite direction. "Anyway, I guess I'll catch you later," she said as she began to turn. 

"You can come in if you like . . ." Logan began, but he figured she already knew that. Glancing back over her shoulder, Jondy shook her head. 

"Thanks for the offer." She gave him another weak smile. "But I've got somewhere I have to go. I've got . . . some things I need to figure out." He watched as she walked away, then turned to the building's door and went up to his apartment. 

Max was pacing a hole in the floor of his living room when he entered. Hearing the door open and close, she turned and stopped to stare at him. Had it only been hours ago that she had stood right here and wondered if she would ever see him again? She knew he didn't look any different to the rest of the world, but somehow, he looked more wonderful than ever to her. 

He smiled awkwardly. "Hey." God, but he wanted to touch her. All he could think of was burying his face in that long hair of hers, just to feel its softness against his cheek, just to smell the scent of her shampoo. He would have given everything tonight if he could have, just for one moment, but the terror of the previous hours was over, and now he was actually afraid that soon everything would drift back as it had been before, but for now, in these few quiet moments, somehow everything was suddenly different. 

"Hey yourself." Max looked down at the floor for a moment and crossed her arms across her chest. She was trying to calm the overwhelming urge to touch him, just to be sure that he really was okay. "You sure you're okay?" she finally asked. 

"Yeah, I'll be alright." There were so many things that both wanted to say, and yet they couldn't quite find the words. A moment passed in silence as they stared across the room at each other. Neither moved, and though Max's eyes focused on Logan, her thoughts were on Jondy. _Do you have any idea how much I envy the two of you?_ her sister had said several nights earlier. _Logan is alive. He's alive, and you just give up without a fight._ Not until tonight had the full reality of Jondy's words struck her, not until she had almost lost him had she really _felt_ just what her sister had meant. Maybe there was this virus thing between them, but in the end, it was such a little thing. She smiled across the room at Logan. _A little thing,_ she thought, _but we're gonna beat this bitch._ But deep inside her heart bled for her sister. She knew what the fear of losing Logan had done to her. She didn't want to imagine the pain her sister had felt at losing Brian. 

Logan felt as if his head were spinning. Hours ago, he had gone from planning his talk with Asha to wishing he could see Max just once more before he died, but now, virus or no virus, looking across the room at Max, he realized that he had everything to live for. His thought shifted to Max's sister. He remembered the way she'd walked into the night only moments before, her head hung down and her shoulders slumped over. It must have hurt, he realized, to see it all happen again, only this time someone else got the happy ending she'd been cheated out of. 

Max was thinking the same thing. As eventful a night as it had been for she and Logan, it had been just as hard for Jondy. Tonight had been the end of over a year and a half of hell. She wondered how her sister was handling it. "Is Jondy okay?" she asked, glancing around the doorway to see if her sister was hanging around in the next room, trying to offer them a few moments of privacy. 

He frowned, not quite sure what the answer to that question was. "She didn't come up. She just dropped me off downstairs and left. Said she had some things to figure out." Max glanced down at her hands. She knew her sister needed her, but it was hard to leave Logan now, after all that had happened tonight. She took a step forward. 

"Are you sure you're gonna be okay?" 

"Yeah. I'll be fine." She glanced back down at her hands again. She was about to speak when he spoke again. "Max, are you okay?" 

She offered what she hoped was an encouraging smile, though she feared it was a complete failure. "Yeah, I'm alright." She took a step towards the doorway. "I should probably go check on Jondy, I mean, it's been quite a night for her . . . " Max's voice trailed off. 

"Yeah, you should probably do that." They kept each other's gazes for another moment before Max reached over, grabbed her jacket, and headed for the door. 

"I'll see you later then." 

"Okay." So many words he wanted to say, only he couldn't find them. He watched her walk towards the door, but turned away. He somehow didn't want to watch her go. She paused, one hand resting on the doorframe. Not knowing that she had stopped, he opened his mouth to call her back. He didn't know what he wanted to say, but he knew that he had to say something. 

"Logan-" 

"Max-" 

They turned to look at each other, both hoping that the other would speak first, not knowing what they wanted to say themselves. Max bit the bullet. "I just . . . I was really scared tonight." She paused, and Logan realized just what it had cost her to make that admission. Max never let her fear show. "I thought that you'd . . . and then . . . and I'd never . . . " she trailed off again, diverting her gaze onto the floor before returning it to his eyes. 

"I know," Logan said after a beat. "Me too," he whispered. 

They locked gazes for another moment, and then she was gone. 


	16. Sunrise

Chapter Sixteen:

Sunrise

Hugging her knees closer to her chest, Jondy sighed and looked down through the darkness at the lights of Seattle. Her acute senses missed nothing on the streets below. Hundreds of feet beneath her, a woman in a short, tight red leather skirt made her way down the sidewalk. She had removed her skyscraper heels and walked barefoot, her shoes in one hand and her purse in the other. She looked exhausted, as if she had been working all night, and Jondy didn't have to ask what the woman did for a living. 

About a block further down, a homeless man slept beside a trashcan, tossing and turning fitfully in his sleep. Fingers sticking out through holes in his gloves, he reached up to tug the worn blanket farther up over his shoulders and slept on. 

The sounds of another day in the city were already beginning. For the last hour she had watched partiers straggle into their homes. Some spoke with slurred speech, some wove a bit as they walked, and some were already preparing to leave for another day at work. Sighing, she looked off to the east, but only darkness could be seen. It didn't really matter, though because dawn was coming in an hour or two, and she wasn't sure just how she felt about that.

Her sensitive hearing detected movement behind her, and she hung her head and looked down at her hands. She didn't need to turn to see who it was. Without a word, Max sat down beside her sister and assumed a similar position, her eyes scanning the city below. After a moment of silence, Jondy took a deep breath and spoke. 

"I didn't kill him, Max." She almost jumped at the sound of her own voice. She hadn't realized how quiet it was up here.

Max leaned closer to her sister. She'd had a rough night. "No, you didn't. Bleed took care of that," but Jondy shook her head.

"Not Perez. Brian. I didn't kill Brian." Max gave her sister a bewildered look. Jondy frowned and looked out over the city once more. "All this time, I've thought it was my fault. I was the one who exposed him. If it hadn't been for my carelessness, Perez would never have known who he was. _I_ did that, so even if Perez did pull the trigger, I was the one who was responsible." Max shook her head.

"No, Jondy. It wasn't your fault. It was never your fault." She put her arm around Jondy's shoulders. Jondy lowered her head to look down at her hands once again.

"I know that now," she finally said. "Standing there tonight, with that gun in my hand, I realized that I could have ended it all. I could have just taken him out of this world, and he would never have had the chance to hurt another human being again. I kept saying over and over again, 'this is the man who killed Brian,' and that's when it hit me. How could I have killed Brian? I didn't pull the trigger. I didn't make that decision." She paused, a tear sliding down one cheek. "Do you know how badly I wanted to shoot that bastard?" she whispered. "Only I couldn't. I couldn't just shoot an unarmed man in anger, no matter what he'd done to me. Then I wouldn't be any better than he was, and then _I_ would have been the killer." She shuddered for a moment. "We've spent our lives running from what we were made to be." She turned her head to look her sister in the eye for the first time since she'd joined her. "When I realized what was going through my head, I thought I was going to be sick." She rested her head on Max's offered shoulder, and they sat in silence for a few moments.

"You know what? I thought that when Perez was dead all this would be over." She sighed. "I was wrong. It didn't bring Brian back, and nothing ever will." She swallowed back her tears. "But maybe now I can start figuring out just how to live with that." 

Several more moments of silence passed, and Max was torn between two feelings. She kept thinking how tonight might have turned out differently. What if something had happened to Logan? _What if . . . _She shuddered at the thought, but that merely brought on the second feeling. If she placed herself in Jondy's position, if she imagined Brian's death as Logan's, it wasn't hard to understand what Jondy was feeling, and the intensity of it frightened her, but it also made her proud. Jondy wasn't giving up. _It didn't bring Brian back, and nothing ever will, but maybe now I can start figuring out just how to live with that . . . _Max smiled ruefully. Jondy was determined to go on with her life. _Brian loved her,_ she thought,_ and it's what he would want her to do._

"So," Jondy finally said, breaking the silence as she raised her head. "How's Logan?"

"I think he's okay. Just another day in the life of Eyes Only." Max gave a sad little grin.

"I know I high-tailed it out of there. I didn't mean to be rude. I just figured you two needed some privacy."

Max frowned and looked out over the city. "With this stupid virus, it's not like it would make any difference." 

Jondy glanced sideways at her sister. "Oh, so if it weren't for the virus . . . " she teased, raising an eyebrow. There was a moment of silence before they both broke into giggles. _Just like schoolgirls, _Jondy thought, but Max shook her head and sobered. "It doesn't matter anyway. It's still there." Jondy put an arm around her sister's shoulders and squeezed.

"Don't worry, you guys are gonna get it all straight somehow."

Max shook her head. "That's what Original Cindy keeps saying. Joshua, too."

"Joshua?" 

Max gave her sister a bewildered look, suddenly realizing that there were a lot of things she hadn't told Jondy about the last few months, including her time at Manticore. She hadn't volunteered the information, she realized, and Jondy had been afraid to ask, afraid that she might bring up some ugly subject that Max didn't want to talk about. She shook her head. "Actually, Joshua helped me escape from Manticore . . . "

And with that, Max began to weave her tale, filling Jondy in on her months back at Manticore, labs, tests, and creepy X7's that communicated with each other ultrasonically. About Joshua, about Alec . . . and about Zack. They talked about Brin and Tinga, and then moved on to Eyes Only and the origin of the hideous virus. _He really must love her,_ Jondy thought with an inward grin, _to have had Eyes Only take on Manticore single-handedly._ Max was definitely lucky to have a guy like that. 

She shared Max's confusion over Sandeman and her DNA. She frowned over the idea of White, but shared the same skepticism over Lydecker's change of loyalties that she had with Krit. She just couldn't quite believe that the same man who had shot Eva had been so angry over Tinga's death. Max finished her tale as the first beams of light began to peak over the eastern horizon. They both fell silent.

"Brian and I used to watch sunrises together." Jondy hugged her knees to her chest and looked out towards the east. Suddenly, somewhere deep inside, it felt as if he were still there . . . "I stopped watching them after he died. I haven't seen one since." Max frowned.

"Do you want to go?" she asked as she began to rise.

Jondy grabbed her hand and pulled her back down. "No. No. I think I want to see this one." _I want to see this for Brian. I want to remember the good times, just once, without remembering the pain. _Max watched as a small smile lit her sister's face, and together, they watched her first sunrise in over a year and a half.

That morning, Max took Jondy to meet Joshua. He greeted her with a handshake, proclaiming with a sniff that "Max sister Jondy" had "cat in her cocktail." 

"Don't hold it against me," she had responded. He and Max seemed to find this amusing, although Jondy couldn't quite understand why. Though Jondy was more than a little surprised at first, she was certainly charmed by his gentility. Joshua seemed too sweet and kind to have come from Manticore, but she was even more surprised to find that he was reading _Black Beauty_, which she discussed with him for over an hour. Having read the book years before, she could still remember it nearly word for word, and she was actually a little sad to leave several hours later. Somehow he reminded her a little of Zane.

When Max decided to swing by Logan's later that afternoon, Jondy elected to stay at the apartment, wiggling her eyebrows up and down as she explained to Max that she thought they needed privacy. For that, she had received a sharp jab in the arm as Max left the apartment. "Use protection!" she joked as Max vanished out the door.

But the apartment seemed empty after she left. Original Cindy was at work, and Milly didn't seem to be interested in anything unless it was food or sleep. "Some conversationalist you are, Milly," she told the sleeping cat, who merely opened one eye at the mention of her name before closing it again and returning to her nap. Apparently Jondy just wasn't interesting enough for the cat. Sighing, she grabbed her coat and went to take a walk.

__

Strange, she thought as she made her way along the street._ Somehow it just doesn't hurt the same anymore. The pain's still there, but it's . . . different. _She glanced skyward for the millionth time since Brian's death, wondering if there was a God, a heaven, some odd chance that she just might see him again. _All this time I've been blaming myself, begging you to forgive me for what I did to you. Brian, I used to think I killed you. Funny, huh? _She swallowed and returned her attention to the street in front of her as she walked on. _God, but I loved you. I still do, really. Do you know that Brian? Do you know how much? We were gonna have a baby, Brian, but I guess you know that already, don't you? If you're really up there, give her a kiss for me, okay? _A tear slid down her cheek. _"If I could go back in time and make it so that we never met, so that I didn't have to live with this, I wouldn't change it. I wouldn't give up a moment of my time with him, no matter what's happened since." I told that to someone once, and you know what? It's true._ She sighed, watching an elderly man and woman walking by hand in hand._ For so long, all I've been able to remember was you dying in my arms, and I'm trying to remember the good times, the way you used to watch me when you came into the bar every night, the way you looked at me the first time you kissed me, the sunrises we watched together._

I stopped him, Brian. Well, Max and Tacoma Bleed and I did. It's over. He won't ever hurt anybody else again. And you know what? We saved Logan, too. Remember how you told me about him once? You were right, he really is a nice guy, and believe it or not, he's in love with my baby sister. Ironic, isn't it? Remember how you always said that life was ironic? She paused to watch a group of little girls playing hopscotch on the cracked sidewalk. _But he loves her, Brian. You can just see it in his eyes, and sometimes it hurts because I remember how you used to look at me that way. It's hard for them though, because Manticore gave Max this virus thing, and that pretty much put a damper on things, but he loves her anyway. He knew what she was from the moment he met her, but it didn't matter to him, just like it didn't matter to you. Guess that friend of a friend lab tech was more of a matchmaker than . . . _

Suddenly she froze in her tracks. "Lab tech," she said it out loud, not caring who heard. "Son of a bitch. Jondy, can you honestly get any denser?" she asked herself. Turning in her tracks, she jogged back to the payphone she'd passed about a block back. She had to hold back the urge to sprint there at her top speed, but she was afraid to draw unnecessary attention to herself.

Thinking back, she remembered the series of tones she had once heard Brian dial. Picking up the phone, she punched the buttons from memory. A woman answered.

"Jolene? No, don't hang up. It's Jondy. Jondy McAllister . . . yeah . . . Brian's Jondy . . . yeah, I know, but I'm okay. What about you? . . . great, great . . . hey, I was wondering if you could do me a little favor . . . "


	17. Second Chances

Chapter Seventeen:

Second Chances

Jondy passed Asha in the hallway outside Logan's apartment. She said a friendly "hello," but seemed somehow preoccupied and more than a little sad, though she did her best to offer a smile. Sensing that something was wrong, Jondy didn't stop her or try to make conversation. She'd bet her right arm that Logan and Asha had had a little talk.

She frowned as she approached his door. Manners and subtlety, she decided as she raised her hand to knock. He answered a moment later, knitting his brow in confusion as he recognized her. 

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Usually, you guys just . . . nevermind." He shook his head. "Nevermind." He glanced down the hallway before stepping back to allow her to enter. He didn't see Asha. He hoped she was okay. She'd listened to his explanations with a sort of a sad smile, then kissed him on the cheek and said, "I don't know who I thought I was fooling. Sometimes things just aren't meant to be, but you and Max . . . good luck." He felt a little guilty. He hadn't even mentioned Max's name during their talk, but Asha was a smart woman, and if she could wish them well, then he hoped that she would be okay.

Jondy followed him back into his office. "Sorry if I'm a little preoccupied," he said as he seated himself in the chair. "I just got some information on a couple of doctors who appear to be smuggling medicine out of Metro Medical and selling it on the black market." It was a half-truth. He was also feeling a little guilty about Asha. He really had been a jerk. 

"So Eyes Only's back in the saddle again, eh?"

"Yeah, I guess so." He lifted one corner of his mouth slightly.

"It's okay. I'll let you get back to what you're doing. This won't take too long." She pulled a slip of paper from her pocket with two fingers and dropped it on the desk in front of him. He picked it up and gazed at the words written on it in black ink. A name and a phone number with a southern California area code. He glanced up at her in confusion.

"I took a walk yesterday evening, when Max came over here to check on you." She sat down on the corner of his desk, one leg swinging carelessly over the edge. "I got to thinking about some things, and I remembered that Max had told me about that Manticore lab tech that contacted you a few years ago. That's how Brian knew about me, too." She smiled weakly. "Thing is, if he contacted you through Brian, and got in touch with Brian through someone else, I figured that if I traced it back far enough, eventually I just might be able to find the guy." Logan glanced back down at the paper in his hand. He felt hope rising, and it worried him. Maybe Max was right. Getting your hopes up could be a dangerous thing. They'd been down this road before with depressing . . . and expensive . . . results. He held his breath, waiting for Jondy to finish. 

"Anyway, I made a few calls and tracked him down. In the beginning, he did a lot of work in the genetics lab. Hell, who knows? He might have spliced Max and me." She shrugged. She'd decided a long time ago that it didn't matter if she'd been conceived the old fashioned way or super-glued together in a petri dish. Either way, she was here. "After a few years, he got booted farther up, moved to another section. Biological warfare, weird bacteria, genetically targeted retroviruses . . . you know, just your standard high school science projects . . ." She grinned, trailing off mid-sentence to let the news sink in. "Anyway, he's been told what's up. He's waiting for you to call."

Logan didn't say a word. He just stared down at the paper in his hand in silence, as if afraid that if he turned his gaze away it would vanish into thin air. He finally looked up at Jondy.

"So he's willing to help?" Jondy almost laughed at his shell-shocked expression.

"Yeah, he's willing to help. Quite willing, actually. I think he's feeling sort of guilty about--" She was interrupted by the slamming of a door in the distance. Max walked into the room.

"I got your message," she told her sister. "Although I have to say that the day Normal told me you'd called while I was out on a run and left a message for me to 'get my transgenic butt over to my man's place' is one that I may never forget." Amused, Jondy shook her head. She hadn't expected Reggie to deliver her message verbatim. "So, what's the big dealio, anyway?" she asked from her place in the doorway.

Jondy grinned mischievously. "Actually, I think I'll let Logan give you the news. I've got a dinner date." She shook her head again and straightened the collar of her jacket. "I promised Reggie a lasagna dinner. You should really teach him how to cook, you know?" she told Logan with a grin as she walked past Max. "Anyway, I've got to go. You two have fun, okay?" she called back to them as she headed for the door.

"What was that all about?" Max asked after Jondy had left. Logan dropped the paper on the desk for her to see.

She walked forward for a better view and raised an eyebrow. "So, who's that?"

"The anonymous lab tech that originally passed on information about Manticore to Eyes Only. Brian Dubetsky was the one who passed that information on to me, and Jondy tracked the guy down yesterday." Max stared down at the piece of paper. She was pretty sure that she knew what her sister had done, but she was afraid to hope. She stuck her hands in her pockets and leaned her back against the doorjamb.

"So . . . "

"So, he started out working in the genetics lab and ended up working with biological warfare, including engineering genetically targeted retroviruses." A small smile appeared on his face. It was beginning to sink in. 

Max took a breath. "And you two seriously think he's going to help?"

"Actually, Jondy's already contacted him. He's waiting for us to make the next move."

Max stared down at the paper for a moment. _So he seriously wants us to call . . . _She thought back to their last experience with a Manticore lab tech, the creep who'd made this virus in the first place. It hadn't mattered to him. He hadn't known how much it would hurt her to stand in this room watching Logan with that goofy grin on his face and not be able to reach out and run her hand along the stubble on his jaw. _Just following orders . . . _She sighed. Shifting slightly to lean her shoulder against the doorjamb, she wrapped her hand around the doorframe. Her fingers just grazed the other side of the frosted glass partition. Here, here was another chance. A second chance to find a cure when so many other leads had left them empty-handed. 

She lowered her gaze to the floor. _What if it doesn't work out?_ she asked herself. _Nothing changes,_ came the answer. _This virus will still be here, just like it will be if you don't try at all . . . _

But what if it does work . . . 

Her eyes focused on the paper lying in front of her on the desk, and Logan watched as the smile began to tug at the corners of her lips. When she looked up at him, she was smiling in a way that he hadn't seen for months. He wanted to reach out his hand, to cup her chin and look into her eyes and tell her how amazing she was. He wanted to lean over and kiss her until the world faded away, but that was out, so he did the next best thing. He reached out his hand and touched the glass on the other side of her hand instead. They'd done this before, he realized sadly, only this time it was different.

Max looked down at his hand, realizing after a moment what he was doing. Their eyes met. _God, but she's beautiful_, he thought. _The most singularly beautiful face I've ever seen_, he'd once said. It was still true.

Stepping sideways on the other side of the partition, Max slid her right hand to the side to make room for the left, which she placed against the panel palm forward. She looked through the glass at Logan. His eyes softened. Following suit, he slid his hand sideways and lifted his other to the glass, so that they stood, palm to palm, eye to eye. Logan leaned his head forward, resting his forehead against the partition, and they stood, holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes through the frosted glass. She raised a hand and ran her finger down the glass in front of his face. It was the best she could do. Lord, but it was easy to get caught in his eyes. They shared a few moments in silence.

"Logan?" she finally asked, breaking the silence.

"Max?"

She raised one corner of her mouth amusedly, her eyes dancing. "Are you gonna stand here all day looking at me like an idiot or are you gonna go make a phone call?" They both smiled at that, but he took her in for another moment before stepping away and reaching for the telephone.

It was all about second chances, Max decided as she returned to her apartment later that evening. She and Logan had found their own second chance, and Jondy was taking a second chance at life. She tiptoed around Milly, who had decided to take a nap in the middle of the floor, and walked to the window and looked out. Even if this week hadn't been the greatest, today had been a good day. She yawned and shook her head. Usually she didn't need much sleep, but tonight she was feeling tired. She crept past Milly again and went to bed.

When Jondy returned some time later, Max was already asleep. It was good, she thought, because she'd come to a decision this evening, and she didn't want to darken Max's day by telling her that she was leaving tomorrow.


	18. Looking Forward

Chapter Eighteen:

Looking Forward

Original Cindy leaned against the doorjamb and watched her roommate's sister carefully packing her belongings into her backpack.

"So you just leavin', boo?" She watched in bemusement as Jondy packed a stuffed green parrot, not the sort of thing she expected a transgenic killing machine to number amongst her possessions. She shook her head.

"Yeah. I figure I've stuck around here long enough." She looked up and smiled. "Don't worry. I'll be back to visit."

Max frowned from her place behind Original Cindy. "Are you sure you can't stay longer?" 

"Don't worry, baby sister. I'll be back. I've just got a few things I figure I ought to take care of. You know, stop in to visit some old friends here and there. Maybe drop in on my old roommate in San Francisco. I kind of vanished on her last February." 

Original Cindy looked down at Milly who was winding her way around Max's ankles. As much as she hated to admit it, she was actually going to miss the fleabag. Max leaned over and picked up the cat as she watched her sister finished packing. As soon as she was finished, Milly leapt from her arms, padded across the floor and resumed her usual traveling spot. Jondy patted her head before reaching for the zipper. "Goofy cat."

Shouldering the backpack, she turned to her two companions. "Well, I guess it's time for us to go."

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Normal stopped chewing the bite of food in his mouth and turned to see Jondy standing in the doorway of his office. He was on his feet, as usual, taking notes on a clipboard, a pencil in his right hand and a sandwich in his left.

"Eating," he mumbled around the piece of sandwich in his mouth. Jondy walked forward and wrinkled her nose.

"Do you have any clue how much fat and grease is in that thing?"

"Oh for the love of Mike."

"What did I tell you last night about watching what you eat?" She placed a hand on her hip. "You can't be eating all that cholesterol. You'll clog up your arteries for sure." He finished chewing and swallowed.

"Not a problem for you."

Jondy shrugged. "Not my fault my metabolism takes care of that." She frowned at him. "Reggie, promise me you'll watch what you eat, okay?" He frowned at her and set down the sandwich, wiping the grease off his hands with a napkin. 

"Fine, I'll watch what I eat . . . after I finish this sandwich." She rolled her eyes. It was the best she would get from him, she was sure. Shaking her head, she watched as he finished the last few bites. 

"I figured I'd stop in and say goodbye before I left." He stopped chewing for a moment and finally swallowed.

"You're leaving?"

"Yeah, you know me, always on the go." She paused for a moment. "But you know I'll be back."

"Yeah, you have a habit of popping in when I least expect it."

"Well, you'd better watch it this time. I'm leaving Max to keep an eye on you." She smiled.

"Great, just great." But there was a touch of amusement in his eyes. She walked over and gave him a hug. 

"Take care of yourself, Reggie, okay?"

"You too." He wasn't good at moments like this, so it was the best he could do.

"Now Original Cindy gonna have nightmares for a week." Jondy turned to see her sister's roommate in the doorway. "Do you have to do that in public, boo?"

Jondy laughed. "What? You don't want to hug Reggie, too?"

Original Cindy held up a hand, an expression of distaste on her face. "I'll pass." Max appeared in the doorway behind her. 

"I just came to see if you wanted to go on one last run with me." She handed Jondy a package. The address was one block down from Logan's apartment. She'd told Max she was going to stop in and talk to him before she left, and this was as good an opportunity as any. She turned back to Normal.

"I'm going on this run with Max." She paused. "I'll be back in town soon. Gotta check up on baby sister, you know." She slipped an arm around Max's shoulder. She gave him one last smile. "Original Cindy? You'll keep him straight while I'm gone, right?"

Original Cindy smiled weakly. "Sure, shuga, but I ain't huggin' him." They watched Jondy and Max walk away. "So, you the one that picked up my girl's sister that night, huh?" Normal glanced away from Jondy's retreating figure and focused on Original Cindy. It took a moment to register what she was asking.

"Well, she left a pretty big dent in my car." He shook his head. "Does everybody know about those two?"

Sketchy chose that moment to burst into Normal's office waiving a tabloid. _Mutant Changelings Found in Cribs All Over City,_ the caption read. "Cindy, you are never going to believe this . . . "

She wrenched the paper from his hand and smacked him on the forehead with it. "You're right, fool. I don't." Normal shoved a package into his hand.

"Hot run. 2456 Spring Street." Sketchy hesitated for a moment, frustrated that no one was listening to him. "I don't care what your stupid newspaper says. Bip! Bip! Bip! I don't have all day!" Frowning in frustration, Sketchy turned and headed for the door. 

Normal shook his head. "Well, I guess that answers my question." 

"Just when you think the world has enough fools . . ." Original Cindy shrugged, reached for the next package on the pile and headed for the door.

"So you're already leaving?" Logan asked, leaning back in his chair. Max had left a few moments earlier, accepting Jondy's hug and a promise that she'd be back in town soon. In a way, Jondy was glad, she'd wanted a few moments to talk to Logan alone.

"Yeah, when I called around the other day, Brian's contact convinced me to do a little leg work for her. See, Eyes Only's been trying to track down a couple of doctors that are smuggling medical supplies out of a hospital here in Seattle and selling them on the streets of LA . . ." She smiled lightly. Logan chuckled.

"Oh, really?" He shook his head, a bemused smile tugging at the corners of this mouth. "Jolene, huh?"

"Yeah."

He frowned. "Well, according to her, the next drop isn't until the first of the month. You've got a couple of weeks that you could stick around. Max will miss you, you know."

Jondy smiled sadly, glancing out the window at the buildings across the street. "I know, but I'll be in touch. I'm going to be in touch with that lab tech, too, so I'll be around." She sighed. "I think it's time I started living again, you know?"

Logan frowned momentarily. "Yeah." He understood.

"Anyway, I should probably get going. I just stopped by to let Eyes Only know that I'm available if he needs another transgenic on his side."

He smiled lightly. "Thanks. I'll pass on the message."

She cocked her head to the side. "I also had a message for Logan Cale. You're a nice guy. You love my sister. She loves you, but if you break her heart, whatever part of you is left when she gets done with you is mine." But she smiled, undermining the seriousness of her message. He understood. He smiled back.

"Anyway, I'll catch you later." She turned to go.

"Yeah, you too. Bye."

"Bye." As she walked down the hallway, Logan saw Milly's feline head pop out of Jondy's backpack. She flicked her whiskers at him in goodbye, and then the door closed, and they were gone.

On the street below, Jondy looked both ways. She knew where she was headed, but she wanted to take a good look at where she was before she left it. Milly's head appeared above her shoulder. She reached up to scratch her ears, and took one last look at her surroundings before heading east. She didn't turn to look back. She was done looking back. It was time for her to start looking forward.


	19. Epilogue

Epilogue

Jondy slipped silently behind the stone wall, trying to make as little noise as possible. She adjusted her grip on the weapon in her hand and frowned. It wasn't the type of firearm she was accustomed to, and she didn't like the way it felt in her hand. Glancing down at the trigger, she flexed her hand again, wondering how well it was sighted in. Oh well, too late to check on that now.

Stepping out from the shelter of the wall, she took aim. Her target was badly hidden behind a tree fifteen feet away, the weapon in his hand a perfect match to her own. His eyes narrowed as he caught sight of her and he raised his own weapon to take aim. They fired at exactly same instant.

Jondy watched as her shot went wide, missing his shoulder by an inch. _Dammit,_ the barrel must be crooked, but it was too late to change that now. She felt his shot impact her chest, and glanced wide-eyed at the already widening wet spot on her shirtfront. Rolling her eyes back in her head, she dropped and lay still on the ground, her eyes closed as she listened to his approaching footsteps. She felt him poke her in the shoulder with his foot.

"Jondy?" She didn't answer. "Jondy?" He leaned closer, looking her directly in the face. She could hear him breathing. At that moment her eyes popped open, and she sprang, flipping him over onto his back and attacking. He lapsed into a fit of giggles, their water pistols forgotten on the ground to his left. After a few seconds, she stopped her tickle attack and helped him up. From the doorway of the courtyard, Sister Sophia watched them, a wide smile on her face. Milly sat at her side, giving her paw a thorough cleaning, pretending not to be the least bit interested in the game Jondy and the little boy were playing.

Jondy ruffled his disheveled hair. "You know what, Patrick? I think it's time for all little commandos to take a bath and head to bed." The little boy frowned, shuffling his feet in the grass of the courtyard. 

"Do I have to?" He put on his best puppy-dog face.

"Well, all little commandos have to go to bed, and how's Lenny going to sleep tonight if you aren't there to protect him?" Patrick puffed out his chest at the mention of his teddy bear.

"I guess he will get kinda scared," he said in a little voice. He gave a shrug and headed back inside.

Sister Sophia smiled at her as she followed the little boy to the gate and watched him scamper inside. "We always knew you would come back someday. Even if just for a visit." She reached into her pocket. "I brought you something."

Jondy laughed. "A chocolate chip cookie. You mean I don't have to steal it from you this time?" 

"Forget it. It isn't worth it. Even if I would have been able to catch you all those years ago, I know these old bones can't catch you now, so I'd just as well give up and hand it over." She chuckled for a moment, then sobered. "I know you're leaving soon, but feel free to stop in for a visit whenever you want." Finishing the cookie, Jondy reached back to straighten her hair, momentarily exposing her barcode to the nun's view. It didn't really matter. Sister Sophia already knew everything there was to know about that. She also knew that she would always be welcome here, but in a few days she was planning to leave and drop in on San Francisco to see what Trish was up to before she went to join Jolene in LA. 

Jondy turned back to watch the lengthening shadows in the courtyard. Sensing that she wanted to be alone, her companion vanished silently into the gray stone dormitory at her back. Jondy sighed. Off to her left was the same statue that had fascinated her when she had first arrived here years ago, the Virgin Mary, her arms uplifted, a look of infinite peace and compassion on her face as she watched over the grounds below. She watched the statue's shadow lengthen across the stone walkway for a moment before she turned her gaze westward toward the setting sun. 

__

Why didn't we ever watch the sunsets, Brian? They're beautiful too, but more sad, certainly, to watch the light fade away than to watch it come. Sighing, she reached down to pet Milly, who had wandered over for attention. 

It was nice to feel alive, she realized. It was good to be able to laugh and to feel it, to be able to play with children without being overcome by the loss of a child you never had the chance to know.

Jondy watched the light fade into a sliver as it slipped below the horizon, then she rose and turned to go. It would be back in several hours, casting morning shadows across the stone pathways, and she would be here to see it, to watch the day begin anew.

And somewhere, deep inside, she knew that Brian would be there, too.

THE END

**__**

Well, did I do too terribly bad? 

I do apologize for anything that is lacking here. I've been sort of possessed by another fanfic plotline that's been running through my head for the last month or so. I figured I ought to finish this now while I had the chance.

So, what do you think?


End file.
